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by alex kirby

Amazon ‘may lose 65% of land biomass by 2060′

May 10, 2013 in Science

EMBARGOED until 2301 GMT on Thursday 9 May

Irreplaceable forest may be lost, for no gain at all Image: By Sascha Grabow www.saschagrabow.com

Irreplaceable forest may be lost, for no gain, and the climate will feel the impact
Image: Sascha Grabow www.saschagrabow.com

By Alex Kirby

Making more land in the Amazon available for farming and ranching means felling more trees to make space – and researchers say that risks meaning that more agricultural expansion will simply mean less production, because of deforestation’s effect on the climate.

LONDON, 10 May – There will be no winners if agriculture made possible by widespread felling in the Amazon continues to expand, say researchers from Brazil and the US.

They calculate that the large-scale expansion of agriculture at the expense of the forest could entail the loss of almost two-thirds of the Amazon’s terrestrial biomass by later this century.

Their study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, shows that deforestation will not only reduce the capacity of the Amazon’s natural carbon sink.

It will also cause climate feedbacks that will decrease the productivity of pasture and soybeans – the reason advanced for felling the trees in the first place.

Brazil is under intense pressure to convert the Amazon forests to produce crops and provide pasture for cattle. But the forests’ natural ecosystems sustain wild food production, maintain water and other resources, regulate climate and air quality and ameliorate the impact of  infectious diseases.

The researchers are from the Brazilian federal universities of Viçosa, Pampa, Minas Gerais and the Woods Hole Research Center in the US.

They used model simulations to assess how the agricultural yield of the Amazon would be affected under two different land-use scenarios: one, business-as-usual, where recent deforestation trends continue and new protected areas are not created; and the other a governance scenario, which assumes Brazilian environmental legislation is implemented.

They predict that by 2050 a decrease in precipitation caused by deforestation will reduce pasture productivity by 30% in the governance scenario and by 34% in the business-as-usual scenario.

They say increasing temperatures could cause a reduction in soybean yield by 24% in the governance scenario and by 28% under the business-as-usual scenario.

It is significant that the study finds relatively little difference between the outcomes of the two scenarios, perhaps suggesting that Brazil needs to tighten its environmental legislation drastically and to enforce it more effectively.

“…it was a surprise to us that high levels of deforestation could be a no-win scenario – the loss of environmental services from the deforestation may not be offset by an increase in agricultural production”

Perhaps the authors’ starkest conclusion (but see our story of 11 March) is that a combination of the forest biomass removal itself, and the resulting climate change, which feeds back on ecosystem productivity, could result in biomass on the ground declining by up to 65% for the period 2041-2060.

And all this would achieve little or nothing in terms of food production. The researchers write: “…total agricultural output may either increase much less than expected proportional to the potential expansion in agricultural area, or even decrease, as a consequence of climate feedbacks from changes in land use.

“These climate feedbacks, usually ignored in previous studies, impose a reduction in precipitation that would lead agricultural expansion in Amazonia to become self-defeating: the more agriculture expands, the less productive it becomes.”

The lead author of the study, Dr Leydimere Oliveira, said: “We were initially interested in quantifying the environmental services provided by the Amazon and their replacement by agricultural output.

“We expected to see some kind of compensation or off-put, but it was a surprise to us that high levels of deforestation could be a no-win scenario – the loss of environmental services from the deforestation may not be offset by an increase in agricultural production.”

The study shows that the effects of deforestation will be felt most in the eastern Pará and northern Maranhão regions. Here the local precipitation appears to depend strongly on the forests, and changes in land cover would drastically affect the local climate, possibly to the point where agriculture became unviable.

“There may be a limit to the expansion of agriculture in Amazonia. Below this limit, there are not important economic consequences”, said Dr Oliveira.

“Beyond this limit, the feedbacks that we demonstrated start to introduce significant losses in agricultural production.” – Climate News Network

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by alex kirby

Warmer climate ‘threatens cassava crop’

May 7, 2013 in Warming

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Dried cassava roots, a staple food source in many tropical countries Image: Ton Rulkens

Dried cassava roots, a staple food source in many tropical countries
Image: Ton Rulkens

By Alex Kirby

Serious food shortages will affect millions of people across Africa unless scientists can neutralise the threat posed to the highly resilient cassava crop by insects which thrive in rising temperatures.

LONDON, 7 May – A plant which is a staple food crop for millions of people across Africa is at risk from disease as regional temperatures rise, scientists say.

The plant, cassava, is a significant source of food and income, and is an important industrial crop, and there is concern that serious food shortages may result and poverty worsen.

Experts say the spread of the disease could halve cassava production and threaten the diets of 300 million people.

The disease responsible, Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD) is transmitted by insects whose numbers are surging, with rising temperatures thought to be one of the factors causing the increase.

CBSD was first identified in East Africa in the 1930s. It is deceptive, because an infected plant’s leaves may continue to look healthy while the roots beneath are being destroyed.

It is only when the roots are dug up and found to be streaked with brown that farmers know their crop is infected. The roots are rich in carbohydrates and are used both for food and to make starch, flour, biofuel and beer.

New outbreaks of CBSD have been reported recently in the Democratic Republic of Congo – the world’s third largest cassava producer – and Angola.

Rambo crop

 

If it spreads to West Africa that will be especially serious. Nigeria alone now produces 50 million tons of cassava annually and plans to use the crop widely in its agricultural and industrial development.

“Cassava is already incredibly important for Africa and is poised to play an even bigger role in the future, which is why we need to move quickly to contain and eliminate this plague”, says Claude Fauquet, a scientist at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture who heads the Global Cassava Partnership for the 21st Century (GCP21).

“We are particularly concerned that the disease could spread to West Africa and particularly Nigeria – the world’s largest producer and consumer of cassava – because Nigeria would provide a gateway for an invasion of West Africa where about 150 million people depend on the crop.”

To counter another viral scourge, Cassava Mosaic Disease (CMD), scientists developed varieties of the plant which are resistant to it. Unfortunately, though, the CMD-resistant varieties are not proof against Brown Streak Disease.

Cassava has a reputation as a tough and resilient performer in conditions where many other crops cannot flourish, and so has been seen as a good way for farmers in sub-Saharan Africa to guard against the effects of climate change.

Research published in the journal Tropical Plant Biology found it could cope with the temperature rises of up to 2°C expected in West Africa by 2030, and would generally outperform six other crops – potato, maize, bean, banana, millet, and sorghum.

The report’s lead author, Andy Jarvis, said: “Cassava is a survivor; it’s like the Rambo of the food crops. It deals with almost anything the climate throws at it.

Out-competed

 

“It thrives in high temperatures, and if drought hits it simply shuts down until the rains come again. There’s no other staple out there with this level of toughness.

“The ideal situation is for farmers to have a diversity of crops, with cassava acting as a failsafe. This would enhance nutrition and reduce climate risk.”

But, in another twist of fate, it is rising temperatures which now threaten cassava because they appear to be one of several factors which are causing an explosion in whiteflies, the insects which carry the viruses that cause CMD and CBSD.

This, coupled with what scientists think are genetic changes leading to the emergence of “super” whiteflies, now means that large swathes of Africa face the prospect of intensified food insecurity.

“We used to see only three or four whiteflies per plant; now we’re seeing thousands”, said James Legg, a leading cassava expert at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture. “You have a situation where human beings are competing for food – with whiteflies.”

Claude Fauquet says: “It’s time for the world to recalibrate its scientific priorities. More than any other crop, cassava has the greatest potential to reduce hunger and poverty in Africa, but CBSD and other viruses are crippling yields.

“We need to treat CBSD and other destructive viruses like the smallpox of cassava – formidable diseases, but threats we can eradicate if everyone pulls together.” – Climate News Network

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by alex kirby

Biofuels cost both rich and poor

April 15, 2013 in Energy

EMBARGOED until 2301 GMT on Sunday 14 April

EU regulations on biofuels raise prices - and pressure to produce more Image: Ramos Keith, US Fish & Wildlife Service

EU regulations on biofuels raise prices – and pressure to produce more
Image: Ramos Keith, US Fish & Wildlife Service

By Alex Kirby

Using biofuels as the European Union demands will force up costs for British motorists, make food more expensive for poorer countries and may increase the greenhouse emissions they are meant to cut, a report says.

LONDON, 15 April – Biofuels, widely seen as the green way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, may in some cases be worse for the climate than fossil fuels, a report says.

Not only will they cost motorists more than ordinary petrol and diesel and increase fuel consumption: they will also make food more expensive.

From 15 April, to meet European Union targets, suppliers in the UK are required to blend 5% of biofuel into the petrol and diesel they sell for transport.

Rob Bailey, the author of the report, entitled The Trouble with Biofuels, says: “Current biofuels are at best an expensive way of reducing emissions.

“At worst they produce more emissions than the fossil fuels they replace and contribute to high and unstable food prices. Policymaking needs to catch up with the evidence base.”

The report is published by the UK’s Royal Institute of International Affairs, a London-based independent policy institute known as Chatham House.

It estimates that as the EU target is reached, biofuels will cost UK motorists about £460 million ($700 million) in the year ahead. This includes the increased cost of the fuel, caused by higher prices at the pumps, and also the need to fill tanks more often because biofuels contain less energy.

The amount of biofuel which the EU requires to be blended in has been rising in the UK by 0.5% annually for some years. The report says further increases to comply with EU targets mean the cost to motorists could almost triple to around £1.3 billion ($2 billion) annually by 2020.

It says biofuels are an expensive way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The cost of emissions reductions achieved by using them is typically several times what the UK Government has identified as an appropriate price to pay.

“You could buy palm oil, cook a single chip in it and then sell it at a profit for biodiesel”

While the Government says carbon abatement costs per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) should be about £56 ($87) for road transport, the report says the cost using the current generation of biofuels ranges from about £105 to £715 ($165-1,100).

It says increasing biofuel use is also forcing up food prices. This threatens food security in poor countries and is also likely to contribute to higher emissions, as farmers respond to higher prices by expanding production, sometimes into rainforest or peatland.

After incorporating these “indirect emission” effects from changes in land use, often into areas valuable as carbon sinks, the analysis found that biofuels produced from vegetable oils are likely to be worse for the climate than fossil fuels.

The report says biodiesel from waste products like used cooking oil or tallow (processed animal fat) is the most sustainable form of biofuel on offer, but even there the risk of indirect emissions may already be substantial.

Rob Bailey told the Climate News Network: “These emissions are even more indirect than those caused by farmers expanding their production of biofuel crops.

“The price of used cooking oil has increased quite considerably because of the demand for biofuel, and it’s started to exceed the price of refined palm oil.

“You could buy palm oil, cook a single chip in it and then sell it at a profit for biodiesel. It’s the same with tallow, and as prices rise the traditional users of both products have to look for oil elsewhere. That drives production up.”

Accounting for emissions from indirect land-use change pushes up abatement costs for agricultural biofuels to between £215 and £5,540 ($330-8,500) per tonne of CO2e depending on the feedstock used, says the report.

There are currently no safeguards in UK or EU policy for dealing with the impact of biofuels on food security (see our story of 31 January, Biofuels needn’t cause hunger) and deforestation (see our story of 30 January, Tropical peatlands ‘haemorrhage’ fossil carbon).. Unless there are, the  report says, the UK will not be able to meet its EU obligations sustainably. – Climate News Network

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by Paul Brown

Dig for victory – and survival

January 17, 2013 in Book Reviews

EMBARGOED until 0001 GMT on Thursday 17 January

By Paul Brown

In a warmer world all of us, especially city dwellers, have a lesson to learn from people in Eastern Europe who have for generations grown their own food for the sake of their own health and their society’s wellbeing.

LONDON, 17 January – The perception of Eastern Europe as backward because “poor urban peasants” need to avoid hunger and shortages by growing their own food on allotments and in gardens is a myth.

Academic research into how the world will feed itself faced with climate change and a growing population has found the pompous western Europeans can learn much from the “practical peasants of the east.”

Western European and North American societies, on this reading, are out of date and in danger of shortages of their own.  They need to learn from the east about growing some of their own vegetables and fruit before transporting food long distances to feed cities becomes more expensive and leads to shortages.

In contrast to being a “survival strategy of the poor”, as the World Bank and others have claimed, the homegrown food networks of Eastern Europe were an important part of social cohesion and community.

Surveys showed that growers shared their produce and nurtured family and community bonds, and their food was valued for its better nutrition and taste.

In Western Europe, even after recent growth in the allotment movement, only 5-10% of people grow some of their own food.  In the former Eastern bloc that figure is frequently more than 50% in many countries, maintaining a long tradition which pre-dates the Communist era.

The research appears in a new book, Atlas: Geography, Architecture and Change in an Interdependent World, part of the Interdependence Day project at the UK’s Open University.

The book examines how the world could change to cope with climate change and a shortage of resources. It looks particularly at cities and how they can survive in an era of change and ensure continued food supplies for ever-larger populations.

One chapter, by Petr Jehlicka and Joe Smith, looks specifically at the history of growing your own food in Russia and Eastern Europe and discovers that it was successful communities which provided its old cultural roots.

The practice continued and frequently expanded during the Soviet domination, frequently with official encouragement. But far from being the preserve of the peasantry, all classes of people were involved.

Across Eastern Europe hunger was not the primary motive. Researchers in a Slovak village found that a mixture of altruism and self-interest was involved, with mutual help and sharing of resources part of the movement.

“Home-grown food and drink (wine and fruit brandy) are shared with guests and friends and their consumption not only celebrates the relationship of hospitality, but serves as an opportunity to appreciate the time, effort and skills invested into the growing of crops and their preparation for consumption.

“Plot produce was considered more natural than food purchased in shops and possessed a distinct colour, specific texture and certain taste. It was an important reaffirmation of cultural identity.”

In Czech households surveys showed that the main reason for growing your own food was not financial.  The most important motive was obtaining fresh food, the second was that it was a hobby, and the third was “more healthy food.”

Most of those who grew their own food were the more affluent families, although it was a popular hobby across all social classes, rich and poor. – Climate News Network

Atlas: Geography, Architecture and Change in an Interdependent World. Edited by Renata Tyszczuk, Joe Smith, Nigel Clark and Melissa Butcher. Published by Black Dog Publishing,  £19.95 or $29.95.

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by Tim Radford

Are we doomed? It all depends

January 10, 2013 in Science

EMBARGOED until 0001 GMT on Thursday 10 January

By Tim Radford

There are immense threats to human survival, two population biologists say. But the end of our civilisation is not inevitable if we act now.

LONDON, 10 January – Humanity faces a possible collapse of global civilisation, according to two Californian scientists. Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, of Stanford University, US, argue in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, published by the UK’s national academy of science, that civilisation is faced with a menacing array of environmental problems.

“The most serious of these problems show signs of rapidly escalating severity, especially climate disruption,” they write. They list other ingredients in the recipe for worldwide disaster: these include the accelerating extinction of vital animal and plant populations; land degradation; the pole-to-pole spread of toxic compounds; ocean acidification and the appearance of dead zones; increases in human vulnerability to infectious disease; the depletion of scarce resources, including groundwater; and resource wars.

“These are not separate problems; rather they interact in two gigantic complex adaptive systems; the biosphere system and the human socio-economic system. The negative manifestations of these interactions are often referred to as ‘the human predicament’ and determining how to prevent it from generating a global collapse is perhaps the foremost challenge confronting humanity.”

Paul Ehrlich is a population biologist and ecologist of academic distinction who startled the world in 1967 with a book called The Population Bomb: critics have dubbed him an “irrepressible doomster”, and even admirers concede that he doesn’t often present a cheerful view of the human condition. Anne, who is married to Paul and is co-author of several books with him, is associate director of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University.

“All nations need to stop waiting for others to act”

The growth in human numbers remains a prime concern for the Ehrlichs. They warn that the projected additional 2.5 billion people on Earth by 2050 “would make the human assault on civilisation’s life-support systems disproportionately worse.”

Future global collapse could be triggered by anything from a small nuclear war to a more gradual breakdown because of famines, epidemics and resource shortages. No civilisation could avoid collapse if it failed to feed its population. Despite food production “miracles” in the last century, the Ehrlichs argue, two billion people today were hungry or poorly nourished. Food was wasted, and demand for meat was increasing, forcing up the price of food grains.

“Perhaps even more critical, climate disruption may pose insurmountable physical barriers to increasing crop yields. Indeed, if humanity is very unlucky with the climate, there may be reductions in yields of major crops, though near term this may be unlikely to affect harvests globally,” they write. (See our earlier story on warming and food production here.)

Other threats to production could come from sea level rise and increasingly severe droughts, storms, heat waves and floods. “Unless greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically reduced, dangerous anthropogenic climate change could ravage agriculture.”

The authors believe that humans can develop enough “foresight intelligence” to respond to the challenge, but they argue that we cannot afford to delay action to address climate change. “All nations need to stop waiting for others to act and be willing to do everything they can to mitigate emissions and hasten energy transition, regardless of what others are doing.” (See earlier story on emissions targets here.) – Climate News Network

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by Paul Brown

Mass extinction forecast with 6C temperature rise

January 7, 2013 in Science

EMBARGOED – Not for publication before 0001 GMT on Monday 7 January

By Paul Brown

Hobbit-sized humans, able to exist on less nourishing food, will have the best chance of survival in a warmer world, scientists say.

LONDON, 7 January – Animals, including humans, will shrink in size to survive in a warming world, according to scientists studying the last time the planet’s temperature rose rapidly by 6°C. What scientists call dwarfism was the successful strategy to avoid starvation for a large range of species including horses, many insects and even earthworms. The widespread response was partly to do with the heat but mostly because many plants became less nutritious, forcing mammals and insects to eat far more to survive.

In the next 100 years the combination of more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and increased temperature could be “catastrophic” for an overpopulated world, according to one of the scientists involved. With food supply drastically reduced, evolutionary forces suggest hobbit-sized humans who needed to eat less would have the greatest chance of survival. These findings are the work of an international group of 30 scientists looking at the vast fossil deposits in rock strata in Wyoming in the US, charting the period 55 million years ago when the Earth’s temperature rose suddenly – as it is expected to do this century.

On that occasion it took 10,000 years for the temperature to rise by 6°C. There were mass extinctions, but the timescale gave some plants and animals time to adapt and move north and south to survive. Many species evolved quickly – dwarfism being one of the most widespread and successful strategies.

The project, entitled the Bighorn Basin Coring Project, involves scientists from the US, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. It is a United States National Science Foundation-funded project, aimed at understanding what happened the last time the Earth warmed and the consequences for the planet this century. The scientists leading the project are Will Clyde (University of New Hampshire), Philip Gingerich (University of Michigan) and Scott Wing (Smithsonian Institution).

What worries the scientists is that this current warming period will take as little as 200 years, if the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change  is correct. This gives many long-lived species, for example trees, no time to evolve and migrate. Even mammals will struggle to move to new areas, because man has placed farmland and cities in the way.

Rapid warming leaves few choices

The result will be mass extinction, and for the survivors, humans, animals and insects, there will be a scramble to eat a diminishing and less nutritious food supply. Lower plant nutrition is caused by higher atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, rather than temperature itself. Plant growth experiments have shown that concentrations of both nitrogen and the protein Rubisco, which regulates carbon dioxide fixation, decrease under higher CO2 conditions, making many plant tissues less nutritious.

To get the same calories herbivores would have to eat more plant matter.  Humans would be forced to grow more crops to get the same nutrition from food and spend more time eating it. Farm animals would also get smaller in response, making meat more difficult to obtain. Competition from insects eating food crops would be fierce.

Dwarfism is again expected to be a successful strategy for the survivors, enabling humans, animals and insects to mature earlier with less food and so reproduce before they starve. The researchers’ findings show that earlier optimism that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would have a fertilization effect, allowing food plants to grow quicker in a warmer world, is more than countered by a loss in nutrition. For an overcrowded world this could be disastrous.

Dr Phillip Jardine, one of the scientists involved, is a research fellow at the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at Birmingham University, UK. Giving a lecture at the Geological Society of London he said this period of warming, known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, led to catastrophic extinctions of life in the deep oceans, partly because of increased acidification and partly through lack of oxygen. On land many plants and animals also died out.

“…the impacts of this on a large and growing human population could be catastrophic…”

However, because the warming took place over 10,000 years, many plants and insects were able to adapt, migrating north to avoid the heat or evolving to new forms. Alligators, unimpeded by dams, were able to migrate using natural waterways and lived successfully in the Arctic Circle. In the tropics numerous new species emerged. On the Gulf Coast of America, for example, 20% of species died out but were replaced by others moving in from elsewhere.

Afterwards Dr Jardine was asked by the Climate News Network what effect a 6°C increase would have on the planet currently if not enough action to curb emissions is taken. “For me this just shows how pervasive the impacts of altering the global carbon balance really are”, he said. “Even if future climate change isn’t a convincing enough argument to decrease carbon emissions, increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations has a very real possibility of reducing the viability of our own food supplies, by compromising the base of the food chain for ourselves and the animals that we farm and eat.

“If we acknowledge the presence of increasing temperatures then we have an additional factor that we would expect to decrease further the size of our farmed animals, and thus the amount of food that we can take from them. I would say that the impacts of this on a large and growing human population could be catastrophic, especially in the developing world and when changes in other resources, for example water, are factored in as well.” - Climate News Network

Read Scott Wing of the Smithsonian Institution

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