Mon, Feb 13, 2012
Dramatic improvements in the way the world
manages its precious soils will be key to
food, water and climate security in the
21st century.
UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner holding
a copy of the UNEP Year Book at the launch
12th Special Session of the Governing Council/Global
Ministerial Environment Forum
United Nations Conference on Sustainable
Development (Rio+20)
Statement by Achim Steiner at the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Ministerial
ConferenceNairobi, 13 February 2012 - Dramatic
improvements in the way the world manages
its precious soils will be key to food,
water and climate security in the 21st century.
According to the United
Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) Year
Book 2012, 24 per cent of the global land
area has already suffered declines in health
and productivity over the past quarter century
as a result of unsustainable land-use.
It highlights assessments
indicating that some kinds of conventional
and intensive agriculture are triggering
soil erosion rates some 100 times greater
than the rates at which nature can form
soil in the first place.
By 2030, without changes
in the way land is managed, over 20 per
cent of terrestrial habitats such as forests,
peatlands and grasslands in developing countries
alone could be converted to cropland-aggravating
losses of vital ecosystem services and biodiversity.
There could also be
profound implications for climate change.
Soils contain huge quantities of carbon
in the form of organic matter that in turn
binds the nutrients needed for plant growth
and allows rainfall to penetrate into underground
aquifers.
Since the 19th century,
an estimated 60 per cent of the carbon stored
in soils and vegetation has been lost as
a result of land use changes, such as, clearing
land for agriculture and cities.
By some estimates, the
top one metre of the world's soils store
around 2,200 Gigatonnes (Gt or billion tonnes)
of carbon-three times the current level
held in the atmosphere.
If existing patterns
of land management continue, increasing
amounts of this carbon could be released
to the atmosphere, aggravating global warming
linked to the burning of fossil fuels.
The UNEP Year Book 2012,
launched on the eve of the 12th Special
Session of the UNEP Governing Council/Global
Ministerial Environment Forum, points to
the world's peatlands as an area of special
concern.
The draining of super
carbon-rich peatlands is currently producing
more than 2 Gt of CO2 emissions annually-equal
to around six per cent of man-made greenhouse
gas emissions.
Today the degradation
of peatlands is happening at a rate 20 times
greater than the rate at which the peat,
and thus the carbon, is accumulated.
The Year Book, launched
four months in advance of the Rio+20 Summit,
highlights another issue of emerging global
concern-the challenges of decommissioning
the growing numbers of end-of-life nuclear
power reactors.
There are plans to close
up to 80 civilian nuclear power reactors
in the next ten years, as the first generations
of these reactors reach the end of their
original design lives.
As of January 2012,
138 civilian nuclear power reactors had
been shut down in 19 countries, including
28 in the United States, 27 in the United
Kingdom, 27 in Germany, 12 in France, 9
in Japan and 5 in the Russian Federation.
Decommissioning has only been completed
for 17 of them, so far.
Countries have also
been reviewing their nuclear programmes
following the tragedy of the tsunami that
struck Fukushima and its nearby nuclear
power plant in Japan in 2011.
Meanwhile, an increasing
number of developing countries have built
or are considering building nuclear power
plants which could mean more old nuclear
plant closures in the future, at the end
of their lives.
The UNEP Year Book says
the cost of decommissioning varies greatly,
depending on the reactor type and size,
its location, the proximity and availability
of waste disposal facilities and the condition
of both the reactor and the site at the
time of decommissioning.
In the United States,
the average cost of decommissioning a nuclear
power reactor is by some estimates around
10 to 15 per cent of the initial capital
cost, while in France, in the case of the
Brennilis reactor, it was estimated at around
60 per cent of the reactor's initial cost,
a percentage that is still on the rise.
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary
General and UNEP Executive Director said:
"The Year Book spotlights two emerging
issues that underline the challenges, but
also the choices, nations need to consider
to deliver a sustainable 21st century -
urgently improved management of world's
soils and the decommissioning of nuclear
power reactors".
"Superficially
they may seem separate and unconnected issues,
but both go to the heart of several fundamental
questions: how the world will feed and fuel
itself while combating climate change and
handling hazardous wastes?" he added.
"The thin skin
of soil on the Earth's surface is often
one of those forgotten ecosystems but it
is among the most important to the future
survival of humanity. The Year Book cites
many options for improved, sustainable management
such as no-till policies to ones that can
assist in productive agriculture without
draining peatlands," said Mr Steiner.
"The Year Book
also spotlights the options and the complexities
of decommissioning nuclear power plants
when they reach the end of their lives,
focusing on an issue for which there remains
sparse information but perhaps where more
in depth analysis is needed when making
energy choices today: namely, the price
of making these plants and associated radioactive
materials safe for current and future generations,"
he added.
UNEP Year Book 2012-
Key Findings
The Benefits of Soil
Carbon
The Year Book encourages
the development of universally agreed and
reproducible field and laboratory methods
for measuring, reporting and verifying changes
of soil carbon over time.
Carbon stocks can be
enhanced by ensuring that carbon inputs
to the soil are greater than carbon losses.
For example:
Forests have considerable
potential for reducing greenhouse gas emission
to the atmosphere by storing large stocks
of carbon both above and below ground.
Improvements of grasslands
offer a global greenhouse gas mitigation
potential of 810 Mt of CO2 up to 2030, almost
all of which would be sequestered in the
soil.
In croplands, integration
of several crops in a field at the same
time can increase organic material, soil
biodiversity and soil health, as well as
increase food production, particularly for
subsistence farmers.
Paludiculture is an
innovative alternative to conventional peatland
agriculture. It involves biomass cultivation
on wet and rewetted peatlands, which can
contribute to climate change mitigation
by reducing emissions through rewetting
of drained peatland soils, and by replacing
fossil resources with renewable biomass
alternatives.
Across the globe, there
are examples of how multiple benefits can
be delivered through effective management
of soil carbon:
In Kenya, the World
Bank's BioCarbon Fund is providing the Kenya
Agricultural Carbon Project with US $350,000
to pay smallholder farmers to improve their
agricultural practices, to increase both
food security and soil carbon sequestration.
From Dakar to Djibouti,
the Great Green Wall initiative is a massive
afforestation project to create a 15 km
wide strip of trees and other vegetation
along a 7000 km transect to improve carbon
sequestration, stabilize soils and conserve
soil moisture amongst others.
In China, similar approaches
are being monitored to assess whether land
degradation in arid areas can be reversed.
In Brazil, changes in
crop production practices have been found
to have significant effects on soil carbon
stocks. Conversion to no-till techniques
in soybean, maize and related crop rotation
systems resulted in a sequestration rate
of 0.41 tonnes soil organic carbon per hectare
per year.
In Argentina, significant
increases in soil carbon stocks have also
been achieved, where farmers changed to
no-till systems, along with enhanced benefits
in water retention, infiltration and erosion
prevention.
Closing and Decommissioning
Nuclear Power Plants
There are three generally
accepted approaches to decommissioning:
immediate dismantling, deferred dismantling
and entombment.
Each approach requires
early and clear decisions regarding the
timing of the closure of facilities and
intended future use of the site. Each also
requires adequate funding, trained personnel,
regulatory oversight and waste storage and
disposal facilities.
One lesson that is emerging
is that nuclear power plants should be designed
from the start for safe and efficient decommissioning.
Several countries have
developed expertise in decommissioning.
But there are considerable geographical
differences in degrees of expertise. In
the United States, for instance, 1450 government
nuclear facilities have been fully decommissioned,
including a number of reactors.
Future decommissioning
of nuclear power reactors will compete for
expertise, resources and waste disposal
facilities.
The International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) has established an
international decommissioning network to
facilitate exchanges of experience among
countries.
Ensuring that gained
experience and lessons learnt are shared
and applied globally in time for the anticipated
boom in decommissioning is of critical importance.
The nuclear industry
will need to continue to innovate and develop
new approaches and technologies that facilitate
a "smarter" decommissioning process-
one that is safer, faster and cheaper, suggests
the UNEP Year Book.
+ More
Top scientists urge
end to policy and governance failures to
tackle social and environmental crises
Sun, Feb 19, 2012
Top scientists will tomorrow (20 February)
urge governments to replace GDP as a measure
of wealth, end damaging subsidies, and transform
systems of governance to set humanity on
a new path to a better future - or risk
climate, biodiversity and poverty crises
that will spawn greater problems worldwide.
These are among the
messages from a new paper by 20 past winners
of the Blue Planet Prize - often called
the Nobel Prize for the environment.
Blue Planet synthesis paperBob Watson, the
UK’s chief scientific advisor on environmental
issues and a winner of the prize in 2010,
will present the paper to government ministers
from around the world at the UN Environment
Programme’s governing council meeting in
Nairobi, Kenya on 20 February.
"The current system
is broken," says Watson. "It is
driving humanity to a future that is 3-5°C
warmer than our species has ever known,
and is eliminating the ecology that we depend
on for our health, wealth and senses of
self."
"We cannot assume
that technological fixes will come fast
enough. Instead we need human solutions.
The good news is that they exist but decision
makers must be bold and forward thinking
to seize them."
Watson’s co-authors
include James Hansen of NASA, Emil Salim,
former environment minister of Indonesia,
Susan Solomon of the US National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration and Professor
José Goldemberg, who was Brazil’s
Secretary of Environment during the Rio
Earth Summit in 1992.
Their paper comes ahead
of the 20th anniversary of that summit –
the Rio+20 conference in June this year
– when world leaders have an opportunity
to set human development on a new, more
sustainable path.
The paper urges governments
to:
Replace GDP as a measure
of wealth with metrics for natural, built,
human and social capital - and how they
intersect.
Eliminate subsidies
in sectors such as energy, transport and
agriculture that create environmental and
social costs, which currently go unpaid.
Tackle overconsumption,
and address population pressure by empowering
women, improving education and making contraception
accessible to all.
Transform decision making
processes to empower marginalised groups,
and integrate economic, social and environmental
policies instead of having them compete.
Conserve and value biodiversity
and ecosystem services, and create markets
for them that can form the basis of green
economies.
Invest in knowledge
- both in creating and in sharing it - through
research and training that will enable governments,
business, and society at large to understand
and move towards a sustainable future.
“Sustainable development
is not a pipe dream,” says Dr Camilla Toulmin,
director of the International Institute
for Environment and Development. “It is
the destination the world’s accumulated
knowledge points us towards, the fair future
that will enable us to live with security,
peace and opportunities for all. To get
there we must transform the ways we manage,
share and interact with the environment,
and acknowledge that humanity is part of
nature not apart from it.”
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary
General and UNEP Executive Director, said:
“The paper by the Blue Planet laureates
will challenge governments and society as
a whole to act to limit human-induced climate
change, the loss of biodiversity and the
degradation of ecosystem services in order
to ensure food, water energy and human security.
I would like to thank Professor Watson and
colleagues for eloquently articulating their
vision on how key development challenges
can be addressed, emphasizing solutions;
the policies, technologies and behaviour
changes required to grow green economies,
generate jobs and lift people out of poverty
without pushing the world through planetary
boundaries.”
