The greatest single experiment in global geoengineering

Without knowing it, if you are a European, you might bear costs of over €500 per year for farmers’ use of Nitrogen fertilizers. According to the European Nitrogen Assessment, synthetic N fertilizer has been estimated to sustain nearly 50% of the world’s population, but its use comes with a very big prize tag. The report states that the increased level of reactive Nitrogen in the biosphere might represent the greatest single experiment in global geoengineering ever made. Similar concerns were already expressed by the Millenium Ecosystems Assessment and later echoed by the by now famous article about Planetary Boundaries.

And while this Nitrogen drives yields, a lot of the nitrogen ends up where it isn’t supposed to.The nitrogen recovery (kg N taken up by a crop per kg applied N) for cereals varies between 30% and 0% across Europe, indicating that 40%–70% of the fertilizer N applied is lost to the atmosphere or the hydrosphere.

From the perspective of the individual farmer the use of Nitrogen fertilizer is profitable. The return of one euro invested in nitrogen fertilizer is estimated to between two and five euro. But someone else pays a bigger bill. “Environmental damage related to Nitrogen effects from agriculture in the EU-27 was estimated at €20–€150 billion per year. This can be compared with a benefit of N-fertilizer for farmers of €10–€100 billion per year, with considerable uncertainty about long-term N-benefits for crop yield”  says the report.

This is no European speciality, it is likely the same or worse in many places. In the US the Mississippi, the Columbia, and the Susquehanna rivers together discharge approximately 1 million tons of nitrogen in the form of nitrate per year to coastal waters according to a report from H. John Heinz III Center. In Rwanda, erosion causes loss of almost 1 million tons of organic matter, some 40,000 tons of nitrogen, 280 tons of phosphorus and 3000 tons of potassium—more than the total use of chemical fertilizers according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development assesses that the fertilizer uptake efficiency is less than 30 percent for rice production in South and South East Asia. Globally the nitrogen efficiency in grain production has deteriorated drastically and rapidly. Around 1960, each ton of chemical fertilizer resulted in an increase of grain yield of 75 ton, while in the end of 1990 resulted in just 25 ton, a glaring example of decreasing marginal utility, as nitrogen fertilizer use increased tremendously in the same period.

What comes in - will go out....

In the end there is nothing really surprising in the report. It has always been clear that not only 40%-70% of the nitrogen is lost to the atmosphere or the hydrosphere. It is rather 100% that is lost, as also what is captured in the grain or the grass, ultimately also will leak away, as long as nitrogen is not accumulating in soils. But it isn’t doing that, on the contrary.

Read more:

Overloaded with Nitrogen and approaching peak phosphorus
Scarcity starts to bite
Nitrogen in the biosphere - a cliffhanger
Nitrogen fertilizers destroy soil organic carbon
Plows into Swords and Swords into Plows

Man: more dependent on nature than ever

"Production in the future will be more limited by the availability of fish than of boats or nets, by trees rather than chain saws and by the availability of topsoil rather than ploughs or genetically modified organism"

Conscious man, as a changer of his environment, is now fully able to wreck himself and that environment, with the very best of conscious intentions (Gregory Bateson[2])

 

Our growing population, market economy, capitalism, industrial technology and fossil fuel together form a force of such dignity that we can now speak about Antropocene, a development stage of the planet, where human influence has become a determining power for the whole planet, for the biosphere, for the atmosphere and even to the geosphere.  Despite industrialism, farming and other uses of landscape is at the core of almost all important debates, including those about global development. Many, yes most, environmental issues are multifaceted and can’t be properly understood in isolation. For instance, because of the bleaching impact of warmer water, elevated nutrient levels from pollution, over-fishing, sediment deposition arising from inland deforestation, acidification and other pressures, tropical coral reefs worldwide increasingly become algae-dominated with catastrophic loss of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, threatening the livelihoods and food security of hundreds of millions of people (CBD 2010).

Many people say, or think, that industrialism has made us less dependent on nature. That is an illusion. On the contrary, current society is dependent on much bigger parts of nature than any previous society was. Hunter and gatherers were certainly dependent on nature, but they foraged on the surplus of limited parts of the ecosystems. They didn't use all the mineral and fossil resources that we do today; they were not dependent on a lot of physical infrastructure like we are and they used less of the ecosystem services. Even compared to the agriculture civilization that preceded us, we are as or more dependent on supply of product and services from nature. True, we produce a lot more per square meter, but we have increased the population so that the entire surplus is needed. There is no more food surplus today than before, rather the opposite. One difference is perhaps that we can today ship food from surplus areas to deficiency areas with the help of cheap fossil fuel and modern technology meaning that local food shortages should be less devastating. But the fact is that we don't do that. 1 billion is short of food despite all our progress. 

The illusion of that we are less dependent on nature is caused by that we live further away from nature. But that is distorting our perspective. The fact that we get electricity in cables and petrol from tubes in the petrol station doesn't mean that we are less dependent on nature for energy than the hunter sitting around the camp fire or the farmer putting another log on his hearth. 

Industrialism was introduced in order to profit from the labour embedded in manufacturing, and later moved into agriculture, fisheries and other nature resource based industries. There is a contradiction, however, that while the population goes through the ceiling; nature resources are getting scarcer and ecosystem services are stressed, we still act as if man-power is the most limiting resource that we need to save on, while wasting the others. The flaw of that perspective starts to show, first in the sectors that are directly using nature resources.  

Production in the future will be more limited by the availability of fish than of boats or nets, by trees rather than chain saws and by the availability of topsoil rather than ploughs or genetically modified organisms. The fact that things have “worked out well” so far should not be a big comfort. Even if industrialism has been around for 250 years and some of us believe (I don't) we live in a post-industrial society, the fact is that this explosion of resource use is fairly recent. In 1961 we used a little more than the earth's bio-capacity; in 2006 we used more 44 percent more than was available. The estimated annual environmental costs from global human activity is equating to 11% of global GDP in 2008 (UNEP-FI 2010). And at the same time we use so called environmental services provided by nature valued to two times the volume of the economy. The third part of what nature does for us, the real value of minerals and fossil fuel, has not been estimated at all[3]. An overall question is of course how do we calculate this and what do we want to accomplish by doing it.

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[2]       Gregory Bateson (1904 – 1980), British social scientist and communication theoretician.

[3]       Ecologist Jeff Dukes calculates that there is 98 tons of biological material embedded in one gallon of oil. Expressed in another way, the daily use of fossil fuel in the world corresponds to the total biomass growth in a year  (Siegel 2003). 

Extract from Garden Earth

Welcome to Antropocene and the anthropogenic Biomes

While most ecologists classify the biomes (nature types or ecosystems) of the world largely as if they were not touched by humans, the truth is that humans now influence most parts of the world, even to the extent that some scientists speak about the Antropocene as a geological era; that we actually change both the geology and climate. Ellis and Ramankutty (2008) identify eighteen anthropogenic biomes and only three biomes that could be considered ”wildlands”, most of them barren, permafrost or sparsely forested. The wildlands represents around 22 percent of the terrestrial land, but only 11 percent of the net primary production (the photosynthesis) because they are cold or dry, or both. All other nature type have been so heavily influenced by humans that they can be called man-made landscapes. Of course, even in those landscapes there are patches of land that is less influenced and even in a field, there are weeds and wild life, but they are all there under conditions created by us; ”human systems with natural ecosystems embedded within then”. It is assessed that we control at least one third of the all terrestrial primary production (i.e. the biological production emerging from the photosynthesis). Rangelands are with this classification the most common landscapes, covering nearly one third of the ice-free lands. Due to arid conditions, the primary production is low, only 15 % of the worlds total and only 5% of the population lives in those landscapes (Ellis and Ramankutty 2008). The value of marginal land is changing. In the past livestock occupied vast territories because there was no possible – or profitable alternative use. It might actually be better to have wild animals roam those plains – as they did long before we tamed our animal companions.

Area, population and primary production of the world

	Area (%)	Net Primary Production (%)	Population (billion)
Dense settlements	1.11%	1.4%	2.57
Villages	5.9%	7.7%	2.56
Croplands	20.8%	32%	0.93
Rangelands	30.4%	15.5%	0.28
Forests	19.4%	32.8%	0.04
Wildlands	22.5%	10.7%	0

Source: adapted from Ellis and Ramankutty 2008.

Ecosystems: Invaluable and worthless

(another extract from Garden Earth, the book)

In the middle of the 1990s, a study estimated the value of ecosystem services to some US$ 33 trillion, double the size of the world Gross Domestic Product, GDP (Hall and Klitgaard 2006). MEA doesn’t try to assign values to ecosystems and ecosystem services, but it shows with numerous examples that if we did calculate such values, many things we consider to the profitable today would not be profitable and vice versa. This is because profit is calculated by the entrepreneurs running a company and as long as they can use ecosystem services for free and as long as the degradation of the services are not paid for, this will not appear in any economic calculations. Some examples of estimated values of ecosystem services are:

- In Belize, mangrove and corral reefs produce fisheries, tourism and coastal protection for a value between 395 million and 559 million dollars annually, according to studies of World Resource Institute and World Wildlife Fund. This can be contrasted to the whole Gross Domestic Product of Belize of 1.3 billion dollars (WRI 2008)

- The value of biodiversity in New Zealand was estimated 1997 to 152 billion dollars, which can be compared to the GDP of 56 billion dollars. The valuation didn’t include theoretically potential services but only those that are known (OECD 2001).

- ‘Business as usual’ deforestation and land-use changes cause annual losses of natural capital valued at between EUR 1.3 trillion and EUR 3.1 trillion, a sum exceeding the total financial losses of Wall Street and London City during 2008, their worst year ever (Arborvitae 2010).

Let it be

In October 1999, the state of Orissa in India was battered by a super cyclone that killed almost 10,000 people and caused a massive loss of livestock and property. A researcher found that mangroves do provide important storm protection to people, livestock, and buildings. Had the mangrove forests been intact, more than 90% of the deaths due to the 1999 cyclone would have been avoided. A hectare of mangrove forest land stopped damage worth $43,000 in the district during the super cyclone. Of course, such severe storms do not occur every year. But even allowing for the fact that mangroves have no storm protection value during non-storm years, the long-term protection value of about $8,700. At the time, a hectare of cleared land was fetching $5,000. Thus, leaving mangroves as storm buffers generates more value to society than clearing them for development (Glover 2010).

How Mexican farmers get paid by American blue chips to bind carbon

To an increasing extent, systems are developed for payment of maintenance or new production of ecosystem services. Already 1996, Costa Rica introduced a system where land owners could get compensation for carbon sequestration, biodiversity, water regulation and aesthetic values. Year 2001, the payments in this program had reached 30 million dollars for a total of 280,000 hectares. Farmers in the EU and the USA are paid for all kinds of environmental services to protect landscapes, water sources, maintain or re-create biodiversity[1]. The USA pays 1.4 billion dollars annually for 13 million hectares (FAO 2007).

The possibly best know market for environmental services is the market for reduction of emissions of green house gases. There are two markets. One is government controlled and is regulated under the Kyoto Protocol, the other is a voluntary market for companies, organizations or individuals wanting to reduce their environmental footprint or making themselves “carbon neutral”. The Clean Development Mechanism under the Kyoto protocol, the EU system for emission rights and the voluntary so called “carbon[2] market” was worth some US$ 143 billion market in 2009, an increase of US$48 billion just three years earlier, so this is now one of the fastest growing markets in the world (World Bank 2010b). In Brazil’s first so called REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) project each family in the Juma Sustainable Development Reserve in the Amazon, each family receives US$ 28 per month if the forest remains uncut (UNEP 2010b). Farmers in the Scoltel Té-project in Chiapas (Mexico) sell carbon sequestration, in the soil and in the vegetation, for 3.30 dollar per ton. Of this 60 percent goes directly to the farmers, representing an increase of their income with between 300 dollars and 1,800 dollars, big sums for households where the average income is about 1000 dollars (World Bank 2007).

The city of New York gets the majority of its water from an area stretching 200 km north and west of the city. The authorities came to the conclusion that is was more efficient to manage the catchment area for good water quality instead of investing in a purification plant. Such a plant would cost between 6 and 8 billion dollars. The implementation of a catchment management program cost 1.5 billion. It includes measures such as purchase of some critical lands; education, support to farmers for reducing use of chemical fertilizers and synthetic pesticides according to FAO, the United National Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO 2007). Insurance and shipping companies are financing the reforestation of the Panama Canal Zone to restore freshwater flows and avoid increased costs caused by canal closures (TEEB 2010).

Global extortion or fair compensation?

The United States Treasury and Brazil have signed an agreement converting $21m of Brazilian debt into a fund to protect three tropical ecosystems. Brazil will use the money for activities to conserve protected areas, improve natural resource management and develop sustainable livelihoods for communities that rely on forests. The agreement comes under the Tropical Forest Conservation Act (TFCA) of 1998, which to date has generated $239 million to protect tropical forests in Bangladesh, Belize, Botswana, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Jamaica, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and the Philippines (ISEAL 2010).

Taking the idea of getting paid for not using a resource to new levels, the President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, has said that his government is prepared not to extract nearly a billion barrels of oil from Yasuní National Park, a part of the Amazon rainforest of extraordinary but fragile ecological and cultural richness. To do so, however, Ecuador will need to be compensated by the international community for its loss of oil revenue – to the tune of US$350 million per annum for the next 10 years. A conservative estimate is that exploiting the oil would bring in US$5.7 billion in present value terms, or 10% of Ecuador's GDP. With abatement[3] cost for carbon dioxide at US$14 to US$20 per ton, the cost to the world to abate these emissions will be between US$1.7 billion and US$2.4 billion for the extraction and burning, and US$909 million for deforestation, for a total between US$2.6 billion and US$3.7 billion (The Guardian 2009b).

Like with other new programs, especially when they involve money, there are potential problems and side effects, some of which are not seen initially. There are examples from India, where poor landless people have been harmed of community forest management plans, because the plans limit their access to resources to which they before had unrestricted access. Other examples when communal land has been appropriated by private owners who suddenly see a commercial interest in these environmental services. In Guyana, a private equity firm has bought the rights to 20 percent of the value of environmental services from a 370,000 hectare rainforest reserve anticipating that its carbon storage, water storage, biodiversity maintenance and rainfall regulation services will become a valuable asset in the future (Arborvitae 2010).

Should the have a price or are they invaluable?

We have seen how important ecosystems and the services they can supply are. Mostly we are not aware of the services that are provided by nature to our benefit. Their composed value is very high, notwithstanding many of them are of such a character and importance for our survival that their value simply can’t be calculated; such as supply of oxygen. We can’t even imagine how to organize the same service if the current ecosystems collapse. Ecosystem services can be more efficient, we influence them all the time. Agriculture is of course the most prominent example where we over millennia has increased the value (for us, that is), the yield, from a certain area. But the example also highlights the dangers of looking at only one ecosystem service, in this case the supply of food. It is exactly that narrow perspective that has led us to degeneration of the agriculture landscape, to erosion, to pollution in the same time as it has given us the possibility to tenfold population.

Surprisingly, there is not a very strong critique against the privatization that payment of ecosystem services actually entail, not even from normally anti-capitalist groups. On the contrary, many of them express sympathy and support programs for programs to pay farmers for ecosystem services. Probably they don’t realize that payment of ecosystem services from taxes represents a giant privatization and a transformation of nature resources and commons into commodities. As we discussed the total value of the ecosystem services probably exceed the total value of the current economy. And as more and more services are threatened, their prices will increase, fully in line with the principles of market economy. This also means that the GDP will increase and increase more, the more we deplete our resources, until they ultimately collapse.

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[1] The link between the payments and the supplied service is rather weak, in particular in the EU. The levels of compensation are not calculated in any scientific or economic way, but are rather just the results of horse-trading between farmer organizations and the EU member states.

[2] The real ”carbon market” is of course the coal, gas and oil market and not the carbon dioxide green house gas emission reduction market

[3] Abatement and mitigation are used interchangeably to describe the processes by which greenhouse gases emissions can be reduced or compensated for by some other mechanism, such as carbon sequestration, carbon sinks. Adaptation refers to the process of adapting to climate change, i.e. not change it or do anything about it, but learn how to live with it.

US$ 6.6 trillion: the bill noone pays

US$ 6.6 trillion are the estimated annual environmental costs from global
human activity equating to 11% of global GDP in 2008.
US$ 2.15 trillion is the cost of environmental damage caused by the world’s
3,000 largest publicly-listed companies in 200
according to a recent report

the beauty is that nobody pays the bill...or our grandchildren pay the bill.

Most of these polluters are supported by governments, according to my most popular blog post ever: The Polluter Gets Paid principle.

The Environmentalist's paradox

Untangling the Environmentalist’s Paradox: Why Is Human Well-being Increasing as Ecosystem Services Degrade?

Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne, Garry D. Peterson, Maria Tengö, Elena M. Bennett, Tim Holland, Karina Benessaiah, Graham K. MacDonald, and Laura Pfeifer has published an interesting article with that title in Bioscience. And hand on your heart, if you are a person engaged in environmental issues, isn't a devastating collapse one of the best arguments for changes? But on the other hand we who would wish that to happen. Anyway, if you are too lazy to read the whole article. They write:

"Environmentalists have argued that ecological degradation will lead to declines in the well-being of people dependent on ecosystem services. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment paradoxically found that human well-being has increased despite large global declines in most ecosystem services. We assess four explanations of these divergent trends: (1) We have measured well-being incorrectly; (2) well-being is dependent on food services, which are increasing, and not on other services that are declining; (3) technology has decoupled well-being from nature; (4) time lags may lead to future declines in well-being."

In the article they come to the conclusion that evidence is very weak for 1) ; fairly strong for 2); not convincing for 3) and for 4) they say there is mixed evidence but strong theoretical support. I find the article interesting and well reasoned, but I don't understand how 4) can have only "weak emperical" support. I believe that climate change is a good example and that soil degradation in many parts of the world is another example. And there are certainly many local cases of environmental degradation reducing peoples' wellbeing, such as water and air pollution, noise in cities etc.

In the conclusions they say:
"Evidence presented here suggests that the growth of human well-being despite losses of ecosystem services can be partially explained, but not completely resolved, using available data. Trying to untangle why measures of human well-being are on the rise while ecosystem conditions decline is critical to improving ecosystem management. This conclusion highlights an important but often blurred distinction between human impacts on the biosphere and the biosphere’s impact on human well-being (my italics). These are clearly two different things, and although we have a good understanding of the negative impacts of much of human action on biodiversity, natural capital, and the biosphere, we have only a weak understanding of the consequences of changes in the Earth system for human well-being."

read it!