EcoRadio

Category: Sustainable Settlement and Agriculture

The Generator is founded on the simple premise that we should leave the world in better condition than we found it. The news items in this category outline the attempts people have made to do this. They are mainly concerned with our food supply and settlement patterns. The impact that the human race has on the planet.

  • Cape York row threatens Rudd’s $60m UN bid

     

    Various estimates have put the cost of such a bid at between $40 and $60 million and the Government has already raised eyebrows by enlisting Governor-General Quentin Bryce to lobby African leaders for votes.

    Professor Wiltshire, who spent six years as Australia’s representative on the executive board of the United Nations’ Educational and Scientific Organisation (UNESCO), says the Government does not know how difficult the bid will be.

    And he says Mr Garrett’s recent decision to support the World Heritage plan has made the task almost impossible.

    Last Friday Mr Garrett and his state counterparts agreed to put the peninsula forward for listing, but the move has angered some Indigenous groups who argue it will stop them entering the real economy.

    The Government stands accused of putting environmental concerns before the very real social and economic problems among the Cape’s Indigenous population.

    “The World Heritage process now requires full consultation, particularly with Indigenous people,” Professor Wiltshire told the ABC.

    “If the Australian Government is seen not to have properly abided by the spirit and the letter of those arrangements, it means Australia could be seen as acting contrary to the spirit of UNESCO.

    “These are the sorts of things that affect a country’s reputation and if you are going for a seat on the UN Security Council you have to show that you are totally committed to United Nations principles.”

    Mr Garrett’s office was at pains to point out the heritage proposal was a first step in what could be up to a 10-year consultation process.

    “The development of the tentative list is the first stage in what will be a long and detailed consultation over the coming decade, helping ensure that we submit World Heritage nominations that have the best chance of success,” a spokesperson said.

    “The Rudd Government is committed to World Heritage and the safekeeping of the values of our region’s extraordinary World Heritage places and we have previously indicated our support for the listing of appropriate areas [of] Cape York in consultation with the Queensland Government, traditional owners and other stakeholders.”

    But Professor Wiltshire, the inaugural chairman of the World Heritage Wet Tropics Authority, says the talk is not being backed up by action.

    He says the UN is extremely unlikely to approve the listing of an area without proper consultation with the Indigenous population, and the Government needs to produce more than just symbolic gestures.

    “To get a seat it’s not enough to go around lobbying the world and doing deals and all these sorts of things, you’ve got to show that total commitment to UN principles,” he said.

    “There is a danger that this (World Heritage proposal) could be interpreted that Australia is not abiding by its true role as a member of the UN.”

    Much is at stake.

    The quality of life of thousands of Australia’s most vulnerable people relies on being able to properly engage in the economy of Cape York.

    The health of a potentially fragile ecosystem relies on sensible and sustainable management.

    But a UN Security Council seat and the prestige of a World Heritage listing could push those concerns to the side.

    Mr Garrett’s office says the Government’s aim is to balance the competing desires of development and conservation.

    “World Heritage listing can be a huge opportunity for economic development on the Cape”, a statement from Mr Garrett’s office said.

    “Australia’s 17 World Heritage properties generate $12 billion annually and support over 120,000 jobs across the country.”

    Professor Wiltshire sees the danger in stumbling blindly into an environmental, political and economic quagmire.

    “If they haven’t properly consulted with the Indigenous people and taken account of their values and wishes and needs there’d be no prospect and the nomination would be stalled,” he said.

    “The World Heritage proposal is doomed if Australia still tries to gun it through. Australia will have a very bad reputation on the international stage.

    “I don’t think Australia has properly thought through what’s involved in this bid.”

    The ABC sent a series of detailed questions to the Prime Minister’s office but a spokesperson would only say that the Government was committed to the Security Council bid.

  • Soy irresponsible: WWF picketed by its peers

     

    “This GM soy is responsible for massive use of pesticides, as well as deforestation and driving small farmers from their lands”, they say in response to the WWF’s claim that it can exert more influence inside the RTRS than if it were to abandon the process.

    To make the point, WWF Holland suffered the ignominy of being picketed last week by its peers for their controversial stand.

  • Wildlife corridors ramp up biodiversity

    Haddad says that he and his colleagues used an idea from marine protection strategies in their study. In oceans, certain areas are off limits to fisherman in order to protect fish. In time, excess fish within the protected areas spill over into waters where fishing is permitted. Dwindling fish stocks rise while fishermen catch the excess fish – a mutually beneficial scenario.

    To perform the research, the scientists collaborated with the U.S. Forest Service at the Savannah River Site National Environmental Research Park, a federally protected area on the South Carolina-Georgia border, to create the world’s largest experimental site devoted to the study of landscape corridors. Much of the Savannah River Site is covered with pine plantations. The U.S. Forest Service created eight identical sites, each with five openings, or patches, by clearing the pine forest. A central patch was connected to one other patch by a 150-meter-long, 25-meter-wide corridor, while three other patches were isolated from the central patch – and each other – by the surrounding forest. The patches are home to many species of plants and animals that prefer open habitats, many which are native to the historical longleaf pine savannas of this region.

    The study shows that areas surrounding the connected patches had 10 to 18 percent more spillover than patches not connected by corridors.

    Haddad adds that plant species dispersed by birds and mammals – wild hollies, blueberries and cherries, for example – were most affected by the spillover effect. That makes sense, he says, because previous research suggested that foraging birds frequently use landscape corridors. These birds would then spread seeds some distance outside the patches.

  • Australia slams US dairy export subsidy

     

    At the time of the EU decision, the federal government protested strongly against the move, arguing it would invite retaliatory action by other nations.

    “Now, both the EU and US are using export subsidies and setting a poor example for the rest of the world.

    “We strongly reaffirm the need for the US and the EU to show better leadership.”

    Last month the government wrote to the US administration, urging them not to take this course of action.

    Since then Australia’s formal objection to the move has been registered “at senior levels with the US administration” through the embassy in Washington, DC.

    The government says it is seeking urgent meetings between with the US and other non-subsidising dairy exporters to help minimise the impact on Australia’s dairy export markets.

  • World Heritage listing plan fires anger on Cape York

     

    Environment Minister Peter Garrett last night said he would not intervene in the dispute.

    “The commonwealth Environment Minister does not have a role in the wild rivers matter, those are issues for the Queensland Government, Mr Pearson and others to discuss,” Mr Garrett said.

    “I am committed to a full and thorough consultation as part of today’s decision about tentative listing. This will be an exhaustive process which we extend over the coming years.”

    Mr Pearson’s support is seen as crucial to the Rudd Government’s bid to move Aborigines from welfare to work and its decision to end the CDEP scheme from July 1.

    Mr Garrett and state environment ministers in Hobart yesterday set up the showdown with far north Queensland Aborigines after they agreed to put Cape York forward for tentative World Heritage listing yesterday despite pleas to hold off.

    The meeting endorsed a “tentative” list of four proposed World Heritage areas to present to international body UNESCO later this year.

    The Cape York proposal was placed at the top of the list in terms of priorities, giving its nomination a strong chance of being formally presented to UNESCO in a process that could take up to 10 years.

    Mr Pearson condemned Mr Garrett for failing to take a stand on the wild rivers issue.

    “As for Peter Garrett’s acquiescence to this, Peter Garrett hasn’t been up here in two years,” Mr Pearson told The Weekend Australian.

    “He has not had one conversation with the organisations or representatives up here. I’ve not as much as shaken hands with him, and yet 15 years prior to that you couldn’t stop the bugger wanting to meet you.

    “He would be up here saying he was a great friend of Aboriginal people and so on at the drop of a hat, and in two years of being a minister he has never darkened our doorway.

    “And the commitment that I make to him is that he will join the long list of failed environment ministers who have grand schemes about trying to stuff Aboriginal people over who will never succeed.”

    Mr Garrett defended the decision, arguing there was still time for Aborigines to be consulted.

    “Today environment ministers endorsed a tentative list, noting that it will now be the subject of extensive consultation with stakeholders, and this will include traditional owners,” he said. “This is the beginning of a process which will stretch over a number of years and full and thorough consultation is a commitment of both the Queensland and the commonwealth governments as part of this process.”

    But Mr Pearson said the promise was meaningless after the Queensland Government’s decision to impose “wild river” declarations on three river basins, despite strong traditional owner opposition.

    Traditional owners and Mr Pearson argue the ban on development within 1km of a river or creek in each of the basins would destroy economic development.

    Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin said consultation with traditional owners would be necessary before World Heritage listing was achieved.

    “It is critical that there is proper consultation with traditional owners,” she said.

    Queensland Climate Change Minister Kate Jones said the cape, which has been largely untouched by development, had international environmental significance and a successful World Heritage listing would help bring tourism and jobs to the region.

    She said the process of obtaining a listing was only in its early stages and indigenous stakeholders would need to be “extensively consulted” before the nomination could progress.

    “Our commitment is that we must undertake consultation and we will ensure that we do so,” Ms Jones said.

    ALP powerbroker and indigenous leader Warren Mundine said it was time for governments to show leadership on both wild rivers and the World Heritage listing of Cape York.

    “I think the federal Government should be addressing this issue,” Mr Mundine said.

    “I think the Government needs to sit down with indigenous people immediately on this.

    “You can’t ask Aboriginal people to get off their backsides and start getting into economic development and economic projects that are now under threat. You can’t have it both ways.

    “Why should Aboriginal people carry the can for white man’s abuse of the environment and locking us into a non-economic future. In native title, mining companies sign off with Aboriginal people before mining projects go ahead. We expect the same thing from Governments with environmental issues.”

    Mr Pearson has taken three months’ leave of absence from the Cape York Institute to fight the wild rivers legislation.

    Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma has warned previously that the declaration of the Archer, Lockhart and Stewart Rivers could contravene the rights of the local indigenous people.

    Mr Pearson said the wild rivers laws would be strongly fought and legally challenged.

    “The terrible thing about this regime is that if someone were to find a very valuable mine, the wild rivers will not stop the state Government from going ahead with it,” Mr Pearson said.

    “So this is complete hypocrisy in terms of the environment.

    “It will be the smaller-scale sustainable industries; it will be those things that will be precluded – that’s the madness of this.”

  • Biochar – an answer to global warming or a menace?

    From Links

    Whatever the case, when activists of the international group Biofuel Watch noted the attention being paid to another attractive concept – sequestering carbon by turning plant matter into biochar (finely divided charcoal), and incorporating it in agricultural soils – their suspicions were raised immediately. A research paper was prepared, critically examining biochar and the promises made for it. An international appeal was circulated — entitled “‘Biochar’, a new big threat to people, land and ecosystems” — and opposing calls to include biochar in the international carbon trading scheme, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). 

    So far, the appeal has been signed by more than 120 environmental organisations around the world. Among their number is Friends of the Earth Australia.

    Suspicions

    The biochar sceptics have cause to be suspicious. Enthusiasts for biochar now include Malcom Turnbull, leader of the conservative Australian federal parliamentary opposition. Considering Turnbull’s other enthusiasms – “clean coal”, for one – his championing of biochar set alarm bells ringing immediately.

    Added to which, some of the proposals made for biochar sequestration are downright barmy. British writer George Monbiot records New Zealand environmentalist Peter Read as calling for new worldwide biomass plantations of trees and sugarcane covering 1.4 billion hectares, with the plant matter to be turned into biochar and ploughed into soils. Trouble is, the world’s total cropland only comes to 1.36 billion hectares.

    Furthermore, and as Biofuel Watch’s appeal rightly points out, the effects in the developing world of including biochar in the CDM trading scheme would be disastrous. An assured world market for biochar would turn the substance into an internationally traded commodity. Biochar is non-perishable and easily transported; give it a further boost by allotting it carbon credits, and producing it for export would in all likelihood yield better profits in developing-world settings than growing food crops.

    Benefits

    In ideal circumstances, the growing of tree crops for biochar could be incorporated into village agricultural systems as a superior use for degraded or marginal land used previously for sparse (and highly destructive) grazing. The biochar produced in small local kilns would be dug into soils, and its dramatic benefits for soil productivity (this is well demonstrated) would aid local nutrition and increase the food surpluses which farmers could supply to towns.

    But add in carbon credits, and the world capitalist market would destroy this harmonious picture. The biochar would not be used locally, but would be exported. Large-scale commercial agriculture, often internationally based, would respond to the price signals and move in. The tree plantations, offering superior profits, would spread from the former goat pastures to occupy prime agricultural land, where they would enjoy first call on resources of water and fertiliser.

    Food production would shrink. An array of economic pressures would drive small farmers off their land, and wealth in rural districts would become tightly concentrated in the hands of the richest entrepreneurs able to take advantage of the new conditions. Local communities would be ravaged.

    The problem, however, would not be biochar, but capitalism.

    Dodgy science

    So should environmental organisations sign up to Biofuel Watch’s appeal? As things stand, no. Action is needed, but the ammunition needs to be of much higher quality. The science in the document is dodgy, and many of the arguments irrelevant or overblown. That may seem a harsh judgment, but it is borne out if we look in detail at some of the appeal’s assertions:

    • “It is not yet known whether charcoal in soil represents a carbon sink at all…”

    In what is a relatively new field of research, many unanswered questions remain. This, however, is not one of them. In a set of notes posted in March, one of Australia’s most respected authorities on biochar, CSIRO land and water scientist Evelyn Krull, points out that biochar “has a chemical structure that makes it very difficult to break down by physical, biological and chemical processes”. “We know”, Krull continues, “that biochar is stable over the timescales of any [carbon] abatement scheme (100 years).”

    Not all biochars are the same – their individual properties depend on the feedstock and on the temperature and duration of the pyrolysis process through which they are made. But charcoal can remain intact in nature for more than 10,000 years – it provides, after all, the basis for carbon dating. Highly fertile, carbon-rich terra preta (dark earth) soils in the Amazon region of South America indicate very strongly that when incorporated into agricultural land, biochar can persist for thousands of years. The terra preta soils are believed to have been created deliberately by ancient peoples who produced charcoal and dug it into the ground along with food scraps and other organic matter.

    • “There is no consistent evidence that charcoal can be relied upon to make soil more fertile….”

    If this were the case, the Amazonian peoples would hardly have bothered. True, the evidence is not 100 per cent consistent. But will, say, 90 per cent do?

    Trials of biochar in relatively carbon-rich soils in Sweden found that soil fertility actually declined, apparently because the boost to soil microbial activity provided by the biochar speeded the decomposition of existing soil organic matter. But in leached tropical soils, and also in the ancient, low-fertility soils characteristic of Australia, the experience has been diametrically different. Evelyn Krull again: “We know that biochar application can have positive results, particularly in sandy and infertile soils. Due to its chemical and physical nature (e.g. high degree of porosity and absorptive capacity), biochar has been shown to enhance soil fertility, resulting in increased productivity and in turn a build-up of organic matter in soil.”

    • “Combinations of charcoal with fossil fuel-based fertilisers made from scrubbing coal power plant flue gases… will help to perpetuate fossil fuel burning as well as emissions of nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas.”

    One suspects energy companies have weightier reasons for continuing to burn coal than supplying biochar firms with extracts of flue gases. Meanwhile, there is good evidence that biochar, by improving soil structure and retention of plant nutrients, can allow crops to flourish with markedly lower applications of artificial fertilisers.

    Nitrous oxide, which volume-for-volume has hundreds of times the warming effect of carbon dioxide, enters the atmosphere largely through the breakdown of nitrogen fertilisers. Not only does biochar allow the use of these fertilisers to be cut, but as NSW Department of Primary Industries scientist Annette Cowie observes, the reduction in nitrogen dioxide exceeds what would be expected from lower fertiliser use. “It seems that when you apply the biochar, that nitrogen transformation process is inhibited”, the G-Online site reported Cowie as saying in March. Studies have found that in some soils, nitrous oxide emissions decline by as much as 80 per cent.

    • “The process for making charcoal and energy (pyrolysis) can result in dangerous soil and air pollution.”

    In principle, the slow pyrolysis process used to create biochar is exceptionally clean. Plant matter is heated in an enclosed, oxygen-poor environment at about 500º Celsius. Volatile carbon compounds are driven off, some of them to be condensed into a useful bio-oil. The remaining gases are burnt to provide heat to sustain the process and (in many cases) to generate carbon-neutral electricity. The exhaust gases that result from this combustion consist almost entirely of water vapour and carbon dioxide; small quantities of oxides of nitrogen that are created can be scrubbed from the exhaust stream using the biochar itself. The solid residues from the pyrolysis process are inoffensive – apart from the biochar, silica ash, plus nutrient elements including potassium and phosphorus.

    Biochar, however, is a “garbage in – garbage out” proposition. If you make it out of toxic industrial wastes, you’re likely to have problems. Such practices need to be prohibited. But that is an argument for appropriate regulation, not for rejecting the technology out of hand.

    No to market scams

    In its handling of the science, Biofuel Watch’s appeal ignores salient facts while stretching others to make them seem to validate particular, preconceived conclusions. Thoughtful readers will spot this, and will not be encouraged to support the document’s correct and necessary criticisms of the CDM and of other market-based emissions abatement schemes.

    The truth is that capitalist markets are a completely inappropriate mechanism for regulating environmental matters. Markets operate to secure profits for private entrepreneurs, not to allow optimum outcomes in dealing with complex natural systems.

    Points such as these can be argued convincingly without giving strained and selective accounts of scientific findings, or creating needless prejudices against potentially valuable innovations.