Skip to content

Bog buy-out

Farming Independent July 13th 2010 by Paul Melia

The state faces the prospect of paying more than €250m buying bogs on which turf- cutting is no longer allowed.

Farmers could be set for a massive windfall after a report commissioned by Environment Minister John Gormley said the cost of buying 130 bogs across the country could reach “in excess” of €227m, plus another €50m in legal costs.

But even if the bogs are not bought outright, the minister is considering buying turbary (turf cutting) rights from affected landowners.

The cost of doing this would be €54m, paid out over six years. A compensation scheme for landowners is also being considered, which would cost €42m over 14 years.

To read the full story click this link

Posted in News. Tagged with , .

By Corinna Byrne
July 15, 2010

No comments

TD criticises failure to honour bogland deal

The Irish Times - Friday, July 9, 2010

SEÁN MacCONNELL, Agriculture Correspondent

THE FAILURE of the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) to honour a deal for the sale of bogland in Co Offaly was described as “disgusting” by a Fine Gael TD at an Oireachtas committee meeting yesterday. Olwyn Enright said she believed the deal for €5,500 per acre for boglands at All Saints Bog and Esker had not been conducted in good faith.

Ms Enright was speaking at a meeting of the Oireachtas Committee on European Affairs. Following a two-hour discussion on the matter, the committee agreed to recommend to Minister for the Environment John Gormley that he look again at the issue and pay what had been agreed.
NPWS director Conor O Raghallaigh told the meeting a deal had been agreed with the 14 landowners concerned, but he said there had been no contract. “The conclusion arrived at was that the proposed agreement would be likely to create a precedent which would lead to considerable pressure to pay the proposed higher rates to all applicants under the voluntary purchase scheme and thus undermine the basis and accepted rates of that scheme,” he said.

He said under the voluntary purchase scheme for bogland the standard rates of €3,500 for the first acre and €3,000 for acres thereafter, were being offered to those interested in selling. These rates were agreed with farming groups in 2004. Mr O Raghallaigh said if the precedent to pay a higher rate had been set, the overall cost of the scheme to the taxpayer would greatly increase from the projected €24 million.
He accepted the negotiations with the landowners for higher rates of compensation were “ill-advised” but said they had gone ahead because the plots were adjoining one another and it was a very substantial area of very important bogland.

He said the negotiations had “run out of time” because of a review in the Department of the Environment which had decided higher rates should not be paid, pending a decision on more generalised compensation arrangements for the ending of turf-cutting on special areas of conservation.

Fine Gael TD Paul Connaughton, who said he had received a letter to stop cutting turf on the family bog a fortnight ago, said the issue of the price of bogland was only just beginning.

“My family bog is capable of supplying not only my needs for fuel but those of my children and grandchildren and it’s a very valuable asset. “I would place a value of €250,000 on it,” he said. He said the NPWS would be getting the Offaly bog at a bargain price and a deal was a deal and should be honoured.

James O’Connell of the NPWS, who took over the negotiations in April 2007 when the owners had rejected an offer of €5,100, said the offer had been increased because of the circumstances and had been made in good faith.

Source: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0709/1224274349554.html

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with , , .

By Richard Douthwaite
July 12, 2010

No comments

Scrubbing CO2 from atmosphere could be a long-term commitment

From: ttp://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-07/ci-scf070110.php

Palo Alto, CA— With carbon dioxide in the atmosphere approaching alarming levels, even halting emissions altogether may not be enough to avert catastrophic climate change. Could scrubbing carbon dioxide from the air be a viable solution? A new study by scientists at the Carnegie Institution suggests that while removing excess carbon dioxide would cool the planet, complexities of the carbon cycle would limit the effectiveness of a one-time effort. To keep carbon dioxide at low levels would require a long-term commitment spanning decades or even centuries.

Previous studies have shown that reducing carbon dioxide emissions to zero would not lead to appreciable cooling, because carbon dioxide already within the atmosphere would continue to trap heat. For cooling to occur, greenhouse gas concentrations would need to be reduced. “We wanted to see what the response would be if carbon dioxide were actively removed from the atmosphere,” says study coauthor Ken Caldeira of Carnegie’s Department of Global Ecology. “Our study is the first to look at how much carbon dioxide you would need to remove and for how long to keep atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations low. This has obvious implications for the public and for policy makers as we weigh the costs and benefits of different ways of mitigating climate change.”

For the study, Caldeira and lead author Long Cao, also at Carnegie, did not focus on any specific method of capturing and storing carbon dioxide from the ambient air. The possibilities include approaches as diverse as industrial-scale chemical technologies and changing land use so more carbon dioxide is naturally absorbed by vegetation. For the study, the researchers used an Earth system model under projected conditions at the middle of this century when global surface temperatures have been raised 2° C (3.6° F). They then simulated the effects of an idealized case in which carbon emissions were reduced to zero and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was instantaneously restored to pre-industrial levels.

The researchers found that removing all human-emitted carbon dioxide from the atmosphere caused temperatures to drop, but it offset less than half of CO2-induced warming. Why would removing all the extra carbon dioxide have such a small effect? The researchers point to two primary reasons. First, slightly more than half of the carbon dioxide emitted by fossil-fuels over the past two centuries has been absorbed in the oceans, rather than staying in the atmosphere. When carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere, it is partially replaced by gas coming out of ocean water. Second, the rapid drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide and the change in surface temperature alters the balance of the land carbon cycle, causing the emission of carbon dioxide from the soil to exceed its uptake by plants. As a result, carbon dioxide is released back into the atmosphere.

According to the simulations, for every 100 billion tons of carbon removed from the atmosphere, average global temperatures would drop 0.16° C (0.28° F).

Further simulations showed that in order to keep carbon dioxide at low levels, the process of extracting carbon dioxide from the air would have to continue for many decades, and perhaps centuries, after emissions were halted.

“If we do someday decide that we need to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to avoid a climate crisis, we might find ourselves committed to carbon dioxide removal for a long, long time. A more prudent plan might involve preventing carbon dioxide emissions now rather than trying to clean up the atmosphere later.”

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with .

By Richard Douthwaite
July 11, 2010

No comments

Agricultural intensification “cuts greenhouse emissions”

A group of US scientists is claiming that the increase in agricultural yields between 1961 and 2005 cut greenhouse-gas emissions overall, despite higher emissions from factors such as fertiliser production and use. They estimate that carbon emissions between 1961 and 2005 were 161 Gigatons less than they would have been if 1961 technologies had continued to be used. This is the equivalent of 590 Gigatons of carbon dioxide.

“Intensive agriculture has a bad rap for being environmentally unfriendly,” one of the team, Jennifer Burney of Stanford University, told environmentalresearchweb. (See http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/news/42966) “We find that although intensive agriculture has resulted in increased emissions from fertiliser production and application, the amount of land spared from conversion to cropland by higher yields dominates.”

In 2005 agriculture led to the emission of 1.4–1.7 Gigatons of carbon, roughly 10% of man’s total greenhouse-gas production, by factors such as nitrous oxide release from soils treated with fertiliser, methane emitted by livestock, manure management, methane from rice cultivation, and burning of savannah, forest and agricultural residues. The sector also causes emissions indirectly from fertiliser and pesticide production, manufacture and use of farm machinery, and energy use on farms. In the same year land-use change such as harvesting of forest products and clearing for agriculture caused an extra 1.6 Gigatons of carbon emissions, say the scientists.
Between 1961 and 2005 the world’s population increased by 111%, from just over 3 billion to around 6.5 billion. Crop production, in contrast, rose by 162%, from 1.8 to 4.8 billion tons. Although some of this rise was because of expansion into previously uncultivated land, a large part was down to yield improvements brought about by the use of higher-yielding crop varieties, increased use of pesticides and fertilizers, and better access to irrigation and mechanization.
According to Burney, increasing yields has historically been a fairly cheap method of sparing carbon emissions, compared with other mitigation strategies. Together with David Lobell from Stanford University, and Steven Davis from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Burney calculated that each dollar invested in agricultural yields has led to 68 fewer kilograms of carbon emissions compared with 1961 technology. This equates to a cost of around $15 per tonne of carbon saved.
Other strategies that could reduce agriculture’s emissions include modifying drainage and incorporating straw to reduce methane production by paddy fields, nutrient budgeting and precision agriculture to use fertilizers more efficiently, and conservation tillage. The costs of these strategies are not well understood, however.
“Increasing yields should be part of any greenhouse-gas mitigation policy,” said Burney. “This needs to be coupled with conservation efforts and nutrient management.”
The global population is expected to reach 8.9 billion by 2050, with a 70% increase in food demand.
Now the researchers, who reported their work in PNAS, are working on the “larger questions of inputs into agriculture and energy use”, says Burney. “Our research group is focused on ways to feed the world under resource and climate constraints, so this is just one piece of the puzzle.”

The full report can be downloaded from http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/14/0914216107.full.pdf+html

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with , .

By Richard Douthwaite
June 29, 2010

No comments

More fuel added to the fire in turf cutting debate

By Paul Melia Farming Independent Tuesday June 01 2010

A campaign against the new ban on turf-cutting on raised bogs is seeking the introduction of an adequate compensation package from the Dept. of the Environment.

Some turf cutters are threatening to go to jail in defiance of the ban. The IFA said Mr Gormley must significantly strengthen the compensation package on offer to families and individuals affected by the ban, which took immediate effect from last week.

For the full story click the link.

Posted in Peatlands. Tagged with , .

By Corinna Byrne
June 3, 2010

No comments

Dairy emissions calculated

ENDS Report 424, May 2010, p. 16
25 May 2010

The dairy industry is responsible for about 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Methane emissions make up half of this.1

In 2007, the sector emitted almost two billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent. Two thirds was linked to milk production and the rest to meat products from dairy animals.

The report follows a 2006 FAO study, Livestock’s Long Shadow, which suggested the dairy and meat industries accounted for almost a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions (ENDS Report 409, pp 25-26). The farming sector treated this finding with scepticism and trade association Dairy UK said the new figures prove dairy cows are not environmental villains.

On average, one kilogram of milk results in emissions of 2.4kg of CO2e but the figure varies. Milk from industrialised regions, such as Europe and North America, has the smallest footprint.

The FAO assessed the dairy chain including producing and transporting feed and other inputs, on-farm emissions and milk processing, packaging and transport.

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with .

By Richard Douthwaite
May 25, 2010

No comments

Deforestation decreases but remains alarming in many countries

World deforestation, mainly the conversion of tropical forests to agricultural land, has decreased over the past ten years but continues at an alarmingly high rate in many countries, FAO announced at the end of March.

Globally, around 13 million hectares of forests were converted to other uses or lost through natural causes each year between 2000 and 2010 as compared to around 16 million hectares per year during the 1990s, according to key findings of FAO’s most comprehensive forest review to date The Global Forest Resources Assessment 2010. The study covers 233 countries and areas.

Brazil and Indonesia, which had the highest loss of forests in the 1990s, have significantly reduced their deforestation rates. In addition, ambitious tree planting programmes in countries such as China, India, the United States and Viet Nam – combined with natural expansion of forests in some regions – have added more than seven million hectares of new forests annually. As a result the net loss of forest area was reduced to 5.2 million hectares per year between 2000 and 2010, down from 8.3 million hectares annually in the 1990s.

The world’s total forest area is just over four billion hectares or 31 percent of the total land area. The net annual loss of forests (when the sum of all gains in forest area is smaller than all losses) in 2000-2010 is equivalent to an area about the size of Costa Rica.

FAO’s press release is at http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/40893/icode/

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with .

By Richard Douthwaite
May 6, 2010

No comments

Warmer soils “release more CO2 than currently thought”

Another positive feedback mechanism that could increase the pace of global warming has been found. A group of Finnish researchers have published a paper in the journal “Ecology” which claims that short-term measurements of the carbon dioxide production of soil provide incorrect estimates of the likely effect of rising temperatures on the amount of carbon in the soil because the CO2 releases they detect come from carbon compounds that decompose quickly. These short-life compounds are not abundant in the soil and if radiocarbon is used to measure the breakdown of the more abundant, slower decomposing compounds, the results are very different because these compounds are much more sensitive to a rise in temperature. In other words, warmer soils will release more CO2 than is currently thought.

The group’s press release is at http://www.ymparisto.fi/print.asp?contentid=351875&lan=en&clan=en

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with , .

By Richard Douthwaite
April 26, 2010

No comments

Common Agricultural & Environmental Policy ?

The EU Environment Commissioner Janez Potočnik has said that he sees “somewhere in the future” an EU policy called the ‘Common Agricultural and Environmental Policy’.

“We need nothing less than a CAP [Common Agricultural Policy] that respects [soil and water] and promotes practices that use them in a sustainable and resource-efficient way. We also need a CAP that can invest in protecting and restoring them when they have been degraded, contaminated or polluted,” Potočnik continued, calling for a “profound greening” of the CAP.

For full story click here

Posted in News. Tagged with , , .

By Corinna Byrne
March 22, 2010

No comments

Planting forests at high latitudes can have a cooling effect

A new study based on high-resolution satellite observations of forests suggests the ‘albedo’, or reflectivity, of a forest needs to be carefully considered in afforestation schemes designed to mitigate climate change, i.e. carbon balance alone is not a good indicator of mitigation value. The authors argue that the Kyoto Protocol carbon accounting rules grossly overestimate the cooling caused by afforestation, because they do not consider albedo effects.

In an effort to limit rising temperatures caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the Kyoto Protocol requests participating nations to account for the carbon sequestered, or stored, in afforestation as one of the many options to meet targets for emissions reduction in the period 2008-2012.

Reafforestation converts non-forested land, such as cropland, grassland or degraded land, to forests. Trees absorb and store carbon from the air as they grow and can therefore mitigate the global warming. However, other factors significantly influence the impact of reafforestation on climate change, such as carbon emissions due to direct and indirect land use change. This study focused on the effect of the albedo of land surfaces, which is not accounted for in the Kyoto Protocol. Highly reflective land cover, such as snow, can reflect back most of the sun’s radiation and therefore has a high albedo. In contrast, forests absorb most of the incoming radiation and have a low albedo. This could have a comparative warming effect on surface air temperatures, depending on the age of the forest.

The researchers used high resolution satellite observations to investigate the effects on climate change of planting forests on croplands across the globe. The projected cooling achieved from increased carbon storage was calculated after taking into account the warming caused by a decrease in surface albedo as cropland was changed to forest cover at the time of forest maturation. This effect is especially important at higher latitudes where snow-covered crop or grass land has a significantly higher albedo than snow-covered trees.

Only individual afforestation projects on a local scale (10-100 hectares) were considered: it is suggested that this represents a more realistic representation of how afforestation might actually occur. Previous modelling studies at much coarser scales than this study have included large bands of afforestation on land that was not cropland and have therefore overestimated the decrease in albedo at higher latitudes.

Previous large-scale modelling studies have suggested that afforestation in tropical latitudes causes a cooling effect on the climate and that afforestation schemes at mid latitudes have little effect. These studies suggest that at high latitudes, afforestation would contribute a warming effect on the climate, due to the darkening of the earth’s surface. The results of this study differ: it is suggested that the net effect of albedo in small-scale afforestation, anywhere on crops between latitudes 40 degrees South and 60 degrees North, does not cause warming. In addition, the results suggest the impact of afforestation schemes on the climate does not fall into clear latitudinal bands.

There are significant variations in the albedo effects across the zones, although the albedo effect tends to be greater at higher latitudes. Nevertheless, albedo-linked warming in these temperate latitudes is not high enough to overcome the cooling effect caused by carbon sequestration at the time of forest maturation.

The study also determined that the scale of change in land use for the afforestation schemes considered in this study were too small to influence cloud cover changes, and therefore albedo, over the forested areas. In comparison, other studies suggest large scale reafforestation schemes do affect cloud cover over forests. In addition, the authors caution that the study was not designed to determine the impact on climate of regional or continental scale land use change through afforestation.

Source: Montenegro, A., Eby, M., Mu, Q. et al. (2009). The net carbon drawdown of small scale afforestation from satellite observations. Global and Planetary Change. 69: 195-204

Source of report: DG Environment News Alert Service, 5 February, 2010
Issue 183

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged with , , , .

By Richard Douthwaite
February 5, 2010

No comments