Wednesday, November 30, 2011
SOIL CARBON CREDITS NEWS
What's in the Carbon Farming Initiative for you? 1-Day Workshop NEW TRAINING DATES ANNOUNCED
To register, call (02) 6374 0329 or
email Louisa@carbonfarmersofaustralia.com.au
What Is Carbon Farming? Why is it so important for the future of your community?
What is the Carbon Farming Initiative? What does it mean for you?
How will it change the way you farm?
What activities are covered?
What new opportunities for additional farm-based revenue are likely?
What risks are involved?
Farm emissions: what are they; how can they be reduced?
Decision-making tools for Carbon Farmers.
Soil Carbon – What is it? How does it benefit agriculture?
Soil health, nutrition, production, and water efficiency…
Planning tools and options to maximising carbon soil sequestration.
Growing Soil Carbon:
the role of the farmer, their animals, their plants, and
the microbial communities.
Trading Farm-Based Offsets:
What markets are available for Australian farmers?
Opportunities and risk management.
Safe, ethical soil carbon trading.
To register, call (02) 6374 0329 or
email Louisa@carbonfarmersofaustralia.com.au
• Campaigned since 2005 for farmers’ rights to sell farm carbon credits.
• Conducted the first study tour of the USA soil carbon industry in 2006
• Secured first order for Australian soil carbon from Chicago Climate Exchange 2006.
• Made first sales of Australian soil carbon credits in March 2007
• Organised the first “Soil Science Summits” between scientists and farmers 2007.
• Staged the world’s first Carbon Farming Conference, Mudgee 2007.
• Launched the first formal training program on soil carbon 2008.
• Helped secure $26 million in funds for research to soil carbon for trade 2009.
• Invited to FAO rangelands and conservation farming events USA 2008/9.
• Consulted by both Government and Opposition about farmer take up rates, 2010
• Invited to give evidence as expert witness to Senate Inquiry 2011.
• Methodology Proponents under the Carbon Farming Initiative 2011.
email Louisa@carbonfarmersofaustralia.com.au
"THERE WOULD BE NO CARBON FARMING INITIATIVE WERE IT NOT FOR THE WORK OF MICHAEL AND LOUISA KIELY."
GREG HUNT, SHADOW MINISTER FOR CLIMATE ACTION AND THE ENVIRONMENT
"I BELIEVE THAT WE HAVE THE CARBON FARMING INITIATIVE THANKS TO CARBON FARMERS OF AUSTRALIA"
PROFESSOR JOHN CRAWFORD, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
To register, call (02) 6374 0329 or
Banking on Climate-Smart Agriculture
“We need agriculture that can contribute to sequestering green house gas emissions and capturing carbon in the soil, agriculture that can move from being part of the problem - agriculture currently emits about 14 percent of global green house emissions and indirectly another 17 percent - to part of the solution,” says Andrew Steer, Special Envoy for Climate Change at the World Bank.. He calls it Climate-Smart Agriculture. It is “agriculture that will strengthen food security, adaptation and mitigation where farmers use proven conservation agriculture techniques together with innovative technologies such as drought and flood tolerant crops, improved early warning systems and risk insurance, We need climate –smart agriculture, which can provide a triple win for farmers by creating higher yields and increasing climate resilience, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and storing carbon in plants and the soil.” Last month, leading scientists from 38 countries agreed. Gathering in the Dutch town of Wageningen, to share research findings on this phenomenon, they were united in calling on the negotiators in Durban to recognize and support the potential that Climate-Smart Agriculture offers. In September, the Government of South Africa hosted a meeting of African Agricultural Ministers who noted the crucial opportunity of a "triple win" for African farmers, and called for support from the international community to incorporate Climate-Smart Agriculture into existing regional and national agriculture plans.
COP 17 and the Supermarket Delusion
There have been 16 glorified gabfests called Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – where the leaders of the world meet to talk about saving civilisation from environmental destruction - and at not one of them has the ability of the world to feed itself been considered as part of the main agenda. And still, at COP 17 in Durban, 20,000 delegates will discuss every trivial detail of an imaginary accounting system for emissions that has a death wish, but Agriculture is relegated to a little side event. Nothing demonstrates the distorted values of the Kyotocrats more dramatically than their refusal to give their attention to the centrality of food production to the human tragedy of Climate Change and the potential solution that resides in the soil beneath our feet. Urbanites, most of them, suffering from the Supermarket Delusion, they see Agriculture merely as an inconvenient source of emissions, not as the difference between peace and war as mass migration of millions in search of food and water create conflict.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
A question of confidence
Friday, November 11, 2011
Pig farmers hit the jackpot with Poo Power
Australian pork producers have been cleared to start earning Carbon Credits under the Carbon Farming Initiative by cutting emissions from manure. They can also slash their power costs by turning the emissions into fuel. Capturing methane at the point of release, farmers can burn it by ‘flaring’ or they can go further and use it to provide on-farm energy to run equipment and heating.
Burning Methane (CH4) produces CO2 that is emitted instead. Methane has 24 times the Global Warming Potential of Carbon Dioxide. The farmer earns 24 tonnes of CO2 offsets for every tonne of Methane captured and burned.
The manure management methodology that makes these opportunities possible is the first released under the Carbon Farming Initiative and was launched yesterday by Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig and Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency Mark Dreyfus. The project involves retrofitting an impermeable cover and sludge management system to an existing unheated anaerobic pond at a southern Queensland breeder unit piggery.
The cost of installing basic methane capture infrastructure is likely to range from around $75,000 to $200,000 depending on the size of the piggery. The Australian pork industry suggests that by using the methodology, producers could increase the return on each finished carcass by around $3.45. Preliminary trials suggest the payback period for this infrastructure ranges from 18 months to five years in smaller operations. 680 commercial piggery operations in Australia stand to benefit from the CFI via this process.
A trial was conducted at a piggery in Grantham in Queensland. Project manager Alan Skerman said the methane released from ponds of swine waste could be used not only to heat a piggery's sheds, but also to create usable energy through an electrical generator. "There's the potential there to reduce the farm's use of LPG by about half, substituting biogas for the LPG that's used for heating the piggery sheds," he said. "As well as those financial benefits, the owner can get extra income through carbon credits…. But there's the potential for the widespread roll-out of this technology in the pig industry."
The methodology was developed in collaboration with the Australian Government, the pork industry and Queensland DPI scientists, and assessed by the independent Domestic Offsets Integrity Committee..
Carbon Farmers of Australia have a soil carbon sequestration methodology before the Committee which could deliver benefits to 130,000 Australian farmers.
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
Day dream believers
"There would be no Carbon Farming Initiative were it not for the work of Michael and Louisa Kiely." Greg Hunt is an unusual man: an intellectual, an environmentalist, and a member of the Abbott Shadow Cabinet. We met him when he was visiting Rhonda and Bill Daly's compost operation in Young. In his speech, Greg quoted Lawrence of Arabia: "Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible."He described Bill and Rhonda as 'dangerous people' for their vision of the future of soil health. And we are dangerous people, he said. How dangerous can a couple of day dreamers believers be?
9t/ha/yr? True or False?
You know who your friends are when someone tells you what everyone else has been thinking. A friend who happens to be a highly regarded soil scientist recently raised an issue about an assertion in one of our press releases, ie. Col Seis's rate of increase of soil carbon at 9t/ha/yr, as follows:
"Using photosynthesis alone and growing plants alone this would be very, very difficult. Just to grow 9t/ha/yr of above ground biomass would be a good effort in many areas, let alone convert that to soil carbon. The only possibility is to bring in a carbon source from outside as a mulch or compost. Then it would probably require large additions of mulch or compost to get increases of this amount."
Our response:
Re 9t/ha/yr, you're right - incorporation of litter is not enough to explain this rate of soil carbon sequestration. As I said in the press release, the nature of carbon farming is such that multiple techniques of soil management are applied at the same time. In the case of Col Seis's well-studied soils, he has used/is using several techniques such as grazing management, pasture cropping, and compost teas. He has been managing his soils this way for 10 years. He doubled his soil carbon in 8 years then doubled it again in 2 years. We have other data from experienced carbon farmers - none as dramatic as 9t/ha/yr, but much of it significantly different to that measured by scientists. There are several possible explanations for this:
1. Science has yet to study the impact of multiple soil management practices.
2. Science has yet to study these combined techniques over the time period required for maximum response.
3. There are phototrophic and autotrophic bacteria that do not need organic matter to create energy, capable of photosynthesis.
4. Soil microbial activity is stimulated by practices that encourage root zone action, including exudates and nutrient fixing.
5. The combined effect of the techniques triggers a compounding or multiplier effect in the soil.
6. Soil carbon could have emergent properties which impact on sequestration rates. (Ie. properties that emerge as soil carbon levels increase – such as increased biodiversity in soil microbial communities – that can drive these increases faster and wider).
I suspect many non-farmers would favour one or other of the following:
7. Carbon farmers routinely misreport their soil carbon results.
8. Carbon farmers are not competent to take soil samples.
There is so much we don't know. We do know that the science is not in on the use of combinations of sequestration practices and won't be for some time. Meanwhile we must do what we can with what we have.
Cheers!
Michael
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PS. We would not expect that rate of increase to continue. Some farmers have noticed that there would appear to be a tipping point at around 7 years when changes in soil management really kick in, at least with grazing management. Soil carbon levels appear to bounce up and down in an upward direction - like a basketball bouncing upstairs. Which is why a system of averaging over 5 years is a sound approach.
Friday, November 04, 2011
Only Diamonds Are Forever: Sequestration, Permanence and the Carbon Cycle
Soil Carbon faces institutional barriers to being traded as an offset, despite its potential role as a bridge to a low carbon future and the many co-benefits for which it is famous. These barriers can only be understood in the light of history: The creators of the Kyoto Protocols were more at home with the concept of avoiding emissions than sequestration. Agriculture was seen through the lens of emissions to be a major source rather than as a potential sink. The science used to establish the Australian National Greenhouse Gases Inventory focussed on the ways in which soil lost carbon after clearing, ie. emissions. Sequestering carbon in soil was not a process much studied by government departments (a) because it isn’t a problem and (b) because ‘Carbon farming’ was a fringe activity, not expected to become mainstream.[1] Therefore the National Carbon Accounting System did not recognise that Carbon Farming existed and the view developed that Australian soils were too ancient and degraded to sequester carbon in significant amounts.
To be included in the cap and trade system – which was designed for ‘avoided emissions’ – biosequestration was made subject to a set of “integrity standards” to bring it into line with ‘avoided emissions’ as a quality offset. These standards are based on a false interpretation of the permanence of ‘avoided emissions’ and a false view of the nature and role of soil carbon sequestration.
[1] AUSTRALIAN GREENHOUSE OFFICE, “Estimation of changes in soil carbon due to changed land use” (National Carbon Accounting System technical report ; no.2) November 1999
How Permanent Is Permanent?
The farmer must guarantee to keep the carbon in the soil for 100 years, under the Permanence Principle, an “Integrity Standard” enshrined in the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Act 2011. (Part 7, Div. 1, clause 87 (1); Part 9, Div. 3, clause 133 (f)). The Permanence Principle was developed for biological sequestration on the grounds that some or all of the carbon removed from the atmosphere may ultimately return to the atmosphere. This has led to the idea that offsets based on ‘avoided emissions’ are of superior quality to those based on sequestered carbon because buyers can be more confident that the abatement they represent is ‘real’. But a close look reveals that ‘avoided emissions’ offsets are no more secure than soil carbon offsets.
“Avoided emissions” usually involves reduced use of fossil fuels. It is assumed that if a tonne of fossil fuel is not used, its emissions are avoided forever.[1] [2] However that unburned fossil fuel may still be mined and burned later. In fact, a tonne of new emissions avoided today will almost certainly mean higher emissions in the future because the price of fossil fuel will be lower than renewable energy and these inexpensive resources will still exist. Unless their use is banned, which is unlikely, they will be available. The idea that avoided fossil fuel emissions today are avoided forever is therefore based on a fiction.[3] Either the Permanence Principle applies to avoided emissions – the seller guarantees that the coal or oil will not be burnt for 100 years – or the requirement should be removed from soil carbon sequestration.
Throughout 25 workshops with Australian farmers on the subject of offsets trading, conducted by Carbon Farmers of Australia during 2010 and 2011, not one farmer was willing to commit to 100 year contracts. Therefore, to deliver the co-benefits that soil carbon offers, soil carbon offsets cannot be evaluated by the same criteria as used for avoided emissions.
Soil carbon offsets represent real abatement: they are purpose built to play a unique role in the global strategy to manage Climate Change for least impact. They also represent a significant value proposition for buyers in terms of the co-benefits they generate.
[1] “Once savings of fossil fuels have been made, those savings are permanent even if fossil-fuel use patterns revert back to those before savings had been made.” Kirschbaum, M.U.F.: 2006, ‘Temporary carbon sequestration cannot prevent climate change’, Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 11(5-6), 1151-1164.
[2] “Many LUCF activities alter C fluxes to and from the atmosphere several decades into the future, whereas fossil-fuel emissions avoidance has immediate effects.” Fearnside, P.M., Lashof, D.A. and Moura-Costa, P.: 2000, ‘Accounting for time in mitigating global warming through land-use change and forestry’, Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 5(3), 239-270.
[3] Herzog, Howard, Ken Caldeira, and John Reilly. "An issue of permanence: Assessing the effectiveness of temporary carbon storage." Climatic Change Aug. 2003 Vol 59, Iss. 3. 29 Oct. 2008 “Conventional wisdom associates avoided emissions with reduced use of fossil fuels (e.g., from improving energy efficiencies, increasing conservation, shifting to non-fossil energy sources, etc). It is argued that if a ton of fossil fuel is not used, its emissions are avoided forever. However… the idea that a ton of fossil emissions avoided today is avoided forever is not necessarily an accurate characterization of the problem because that unburned fossil fuel may still be mined and burned later. In fact, economic considerations lead one to conclude that a ton of avoided emissions today will, absent an absolute quantity constraint on emissions in all regions through time, mean higher emissions in the future. The simple reasoning is that the price path of fossil fuel will be lower in the future because these inexpensive resources still exist and therefore the future use of fossil fuels and carbon emissions would increase. Thus, there will be leakage into the future from avoided emissions that is analogous to the leakage of carbon from sequestration reservoirs. The temporal leakage from a carbon policy is analogous to well recognized spatial leakage that occurs when only part of the world undertakes a carbon policy. In other words, the idea that avoided fossil fuel emissions today are avoided forever is in error.”
Precedents other than 100 years
Various accounting systems for carbon sinks have entertained periods other than 100 Years before this. “Carbon accounting methodologies have been devised especially for sinks projects, taking into account the technical differences in relation to other types of emission reduction projects,” according to a 2002 Winrock report for the US EPA.[1]. “The treatment of permanence, therefore, influences and is influenced by the choice of carbon accounting methodologies, the timeframes chosen for carbon accounting, and the approach chosen for dealing with liabilities (i.e., the need to return or replace carbon credits if carbon is released to the atmosphere.”)
There are IPCC precedents for accounting periods of 20, 30 and 60 years. The Milan conference of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change established two types of emission offsets under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), valid for afforestation and reforestation activities. ‘In order to account for the non-permanent nature of carbon storage in forests, these credits expire after a predefined periods, after which the buyer needs to replace them.
The Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), the most widely used carbon accounting standard among projects issuing credits in the voluntary market, allows for a period of 25 years. Redd Forests, the Australian based carbon project developer, has achieved validation of its Tasmanian Improved Forestry Management projects that avoids the emissions of greenhouse gases resulting from the logging, chipping and pulping of the timber into short-lived paper products. Instead the forests will be protected and managed by their owners for 25 years.[2]
Alternatives to 100 Years: The Equivalence Method
An IPCC Special Report on Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage reveals another example of such an approach in the “tonne-year alternative for accounting” that defines an artificial equivalence so that capture and storage for a given time interval (for example, t years) are equated with permanent storage. Typically capture and storage for one year would result in a number of credits equal to 1/t, and thus storage for t years would result in one full credit. A variety of constructs have been proposed for defining the number of storage years that would be equated with permanent storage. “Despite being based on scientific and technical considerations, this equivalence is basically a political decision.”[1]
100 Years: a political construct?
“This 100 year timeframe is a policy-determination, not a technical one,” reveals an EcoSecurities report.[1] It is a period chosen by the IPCC for calculating the Global Warming Potential of each different Greenhouse Gas compared to CO2. For instance, Nitrous Oxide has a GWP of 298 (ie., one tonne of N2O is equivalent to 298 tonnes of CO2).
Some believe that 100 years is the time it takes for a tonne of CO2 to cycle through the atmosphere. It is not. This takes only 4 years, according to an IPCC Report. “The turnover time of CO2 in the atmosphere, measured as the ratio of the content to the fluxes through it, is about 4 years. This means that on average it takes only a few years before a CO2 molecule in the atmosphere is taken up by plants or dissolved in the ocean.”[2] However, it can take far longer for the atmosphere to adjust to the new levels of CO2, up to 200 years.[3]
The EcoSecurities analysts calculate that removing a tonne of CO2 and holding it for 55 years is sufficient to counteract its effect on Global Warming. The IPCC uses 20, 100 and 500 year periods in much of its analysis. “The Kyoto Protocol set the time horizon against which [GWPs] are to be determined at 100 years (addendum to the Protocol, Decision 2/CP.3, para. 3).[4] To be consistent, it can be implied therefore that the Protocol also requires the benefits of sequestration in counteracting the radiative forcing effects of CO2 emissions to be evaluated over a 100 year time horizon. Any uncertainties derive from both this choice of time horizon, as well as future scenarios of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, are not technically driven but rather are a natural consequence of ‘arbitrary’ policy selections.”[5]
[1] Pedro Moura Costa and Charlie Wilson, An equivalence factor between CO2 avoided emissions and sequestration – description and applications in forestry, Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Volume 5, Number 1, 51-60
[2] Watson, R.T., Rodhe, H., Oeschger, H. and Siegenthaler, U. 1990. Greenhouse gases and aerosols. In IPCC Report No 1, World Meteorological Organization and United Nations Environment Programme, Cambridge University Press.
[3] “This short time scale must not be confused with the time it takes tor the atmospheric CO2 level to adjust to a new equilibrium if sources or sinks change This adjustment time… is of the order of 50 - 200 years, determined mainly by the slow exchange of carbon between surface waters and the deep ocean.” ibid
[4] Reaffirms that global warming potentials used by Parties should be those provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its Second Assessment Report (“1995 IPCC GWP values”) based on the effects of the greenhouse gases over a 100-year time horizon, taking into account the inherent and complicated uncertainties involved in global warming potential estimates. In addition, for information purposes only, Parties may also use another time horizon, as provided in the Second Assessment Report.” IPCC, REPORT OF THE CONFERENCE OF THE PARTIES ON ITS THIRD SESSION, HELD AT KYOTO FROM 1 TO 11 DECEMBER 1997, PART TWO: ACTION TAKEN BY THE CONFERENCE OF THE PARTIES AT ITS THIRD SESSION, 25 March 1998, P. 31, Decision 2/CP.3
[5] APPENDIX: 100 YEARS A FICTION? (Below)
“Functional Permanence”
Clearly, there is no definition of Permanence for Biosequestration that is dictated by Scientific Fact. The periods quoted range from 4 years to ‘forever’, with points of 20, 50, 55, 100, 200 and 500 years in between. The choice of 100 Years appears to have been a function of the need to find a scale on which to compare the Global Warming Potential of various Greenhouse Gases. Its choice as a time horizon took place as part of the negotiations around the Kyoto Protocols and was based on functional considerations. One function – the engagement of farmers in soil carbon sequestration activities – was overlooked. Several other functions are considered in the following “Time Horizon by Function” table.
| Time Horizon 5 Years Function |
1. Time required for excess CO2 to be taken up by plant or ocean. 2. Most acceptable compliance period for farmers. 3. A minimum reporting period. 4. A renewable contract period. |
Time Horizon 25 Years |
| Function 1. Approximate period at which soil reaches theoretical saturation point, ie. “Steady State”. 2. Period covered by 5 renewable 5 year contracts. Time Horizon 50 Years 1. Period in which removing 1tCO2 from the atmosphere and storing it counteracts the radiative forcing effect, integrated over a 100-year time horizon, of a 1 t CO2 pulse emission. (See "100 Years A Fiction" below) 2. Period in which soils and vegetation in the world’s agricultural lands can draw down the equivalent of 50ppm, stalling Global Warming for long enough for the shift to a low carbon economy can be made. (See "Bridge To The Future" below.) 3. Period in which the culture of Australian Agriculture is changed by two generations of farmers being incentivised by tradable offsets and stewardship payments for maintenance of carbon sequestered in the landscape. |
|
The Act allows for periods less than 100 years
Recommendation
The Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Act makes provision for a period other than 100 years to be specified in the regulations. The Minister can make regulations to set the period at any length:
"Part 7, Div. 1, clause 87, Maximum potential relinquishment period (1) For the purposes of this Act, the maximum potential relinquishment period for an eligible offsets project is: (a) 100 years; or (b) if, at the time when the declaration of the project as an eligible offsets project was made, a greater number of years was specified in the regulations—that greater number of years. (2) However, if: (a) the regulations specify a number of years that is less than 100 years; and (b) those regulations are made after the time when the declaration of a project as an eligible offsets project was made; then, despite subsection (1), that lesser number of years is the maximum potential relinquishment period for the eligible offsets project.
Part 9, Div. 3, clause 133 Offsets integrity standards (1) For the purposes of this Act, the offsets integrity standards are as follows: (f) a method specified in a methodology determination in accordance with paragraph 106(1)(c) or (d) in relation to a sequestration offsets project should provide for adjustments to take account of significant cyclical variations that are likely to occur in the amount of carbon sequestered in the relevant carbon pool on the project area or project areas during: (i) a 100‑year period; or (ii) if, at the time when the methodology determination was made, another period was specified in the regulations—that other period…”
Recommendation on Permanence
It is recommended that various periods be included in Regulations attached to the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Act 2011. These ‘other periods’ should include 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, 25 years, and five year periods up to 55 years. The choice of a period should be justified on the basis of a demonstrable connection between the period and a function directly related to the objectives of the Program: mitigation, abatement, restoration, etc.
100 Years a Fiction (Part 3)
“In operationalising the Absolute Global Warming Potential concept, the Kyoto Protocol sets 100 years as the reference time frame over which cumulative radiative forcing is to be measured. Over this 100-year period, the decay curve integral is equivalent to the forcing effect of approximately 55 tonne-years of CO2. Hence, we can infer that removing 1tCO2 from the atmosphere and storing it for 55 years counteracts the radiative forcing effect, integrated over a 100-year time horizon, of a 1 t CO2 pulse emission. Under the terms of the Kyoto Protocol, the AGWP100 of CO2 represents the radiative effect of a pulse emission which any sequestration-based activity is designed to counteract (or indeed, any emission reduction activity is designed to avoid or delay). In effect therefore, as understood by the Protocol, carbon sequestered at t=0 and stored until t=55 is directly equivalent to an avoided emission at t=0 and could be credited accordingly. Any new emission from the subsequent release of the stored carbon at t=55 would not be deemed to have caused any additional radiative forcing effects to those which characterized the start point of the project, measured over the 100-year reference period from the point of emission/sequestration. This timeframe of equivalence between sequestered and emitted CO2 is here called the ‘Equivalence Time’ (Te). The re-emission of sequestered carbon after its storage for t=Te does not affect this equivalence.”[1]
[1] Pedro Moura Costa and Charlie Wilson, An equivalence factor between CO2 avoided emissions and sequestration – description and applications in forestry, Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Volume 5, Number 1, 51-60
A Secure Bridge to the Future
The short term, make-or-break role of soil carbon is as ‘a bridge to the future’, as depicted by the world’s most eminent soil carbon scientist, Dr Rattan Lal. Lal and his colleagues believe that carbon farming can stall Global Warming: “The technical potential of carbon sequestration in world soils may be 2 billion to 3 billion mt per year for the next 50 years. The potential of carbon sequestration in soils and vegetation together is equivalent to a draw-down of about 50 parts per million of atmospheric CO2 by 2100.”[1] This would enable mankind to keep CO2 levels below 450 parts per million and consequently hold global mean temperature from rising through the dangerous 2°C level. Dr Lal declares that. this process is immediately available, requiring a low cost change in land management practices across the world’s 5 billion hectares of farm land.“C sequestration in terrestrial biosphere (e.g., forests, agricultural soils) is considered a low-hanging fruit, a win-win strategy, and a bridge to the future until low-C or no-C fuel sources take effect.”[2]
Lal’s declaration is supported by America’s most prominent climate scientist, NASA’s James Hansen who said: “A reward system for improved agricultural and forestry practices that sequester carbon could remove the current CO2 overshot… A 50ppm draw down via agriculture and forestry practices seems plausible.”[3]
Australian scientists are recognising that the world has no credible alternative in the short term. The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists declared: “It will be next to impossible for Australia to achieve the scale of [emissions] reductions required in sufficient time to avoid dangerous climate change unless we also remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it in vegetation and soils.”[4]
The CSIRO acknowledges the phenomenon: “[W]hat [soil carbon sequestration] actually gives us is time to make those adjustments,” according to the CSIRO’s Dr Michael Battaglia.[5]
[1] RATTAN LAL, “The Potential for Soil Carbon Sequestration” in Agriculture and Climate Change: An Agenda for Negotiation in Copenhagen, International Food Policy Research Institute, 2009.
[2] RATTAN LAL, Editorial / Soil & Tillage Research 96 (2007) 1–5
[3] Hansen, J., Mki. Sato, P. Kharecha, D. Beerling, R. Berner, V. Masson-Delmotte, M. Pagani, M. Raymo, D.L. Royer, and J.C. Zachos, 2008: Target atmospheric CO2: Where should humanity aim? Open Atmos. Sci. J., 2, 217-231
[5] DR MICHAEL BATTAGLIA, THEME LEADER, SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE FLAGSHIP, CSIRO, Inquiry into Soil Carbon Sequestration in Victoria, Environment and Natural Resources Committee, Parliament of Victoria, September 2010
