news20100307gdn1

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Climate change]
Rise in UK carbon emissions disputed by report

Soil deposits of CO2 'not fuelling global warming yet – but will in future'
Juliette Jowit
The Observer, Sunday 7 March 2010 Article history

{{A national UK soil survey has found no net carbon loss.}
{Photograph}: Graham Turner}

A major study for the UK government has cast doubt over claims that rising temperatures are causing soil to pump greater amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, further fuelling global warming.

In 2005 it was reported in the science journal Nature that over the past 25 years 100m tonnes of carbon dioxide had been released by the soil of England and Wales. The figure cancelled out all emissions cuts in the UK since 1990.

However, a national survey of the soils of Great Britain, funded by the department for environment food and rural affairs, claims to have found no net loss of carbon over approximately the same period.

Scientists have now proposed that a special study group, with an independent statistical expert, should examine why the reports differ and which result is more likely to be correct.

The latest questions follow weeks of claims that predictions about the impacts of climate change have been overstated or miscalculated, including the melting of Himalayan glaciers, and separate allegations of bias based on leaked emails from scientists at the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia.

The author of the latest report, Professor Bridget Emmett of the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), warned that finding there had been no loss of carbon so far should not be taken to mean the absence of a threat. In the long term, scientists predict a "tipping point" when the faster activity of microbes in warmer soils starts to generate more CO2 than can be absorbed by plants.

"That's when you start losing carbon as a whole," said Emmett. "Most of the models say that will be later this century."

The 2005 report in Nature was based on the National Soil Inventory, carried out initially between 1978 and 1983, and again from 1994 to 2003, by the National Soil Resources Institute at Cranfield University. That study said that from 1978 to 2003 there had been an estimated loss of 4m tonnes of carbon a year from the soils of England and Wales, and the researchers estimated that, because of the higher carbon content of Scotland's peaty soils, the annual loss from the UK as a whole was 13m tonnes a year. The fact that the losses occurred across all types of land use suggested a link to climate change, said the team.

At that time, one of the research team, Professor Guy Kirk of Cranfield University, told a conference: "It had been reckoned that the CO2 fertilisation effect was offsetting about 25% of the direct human-induced carbon dioxide emissions. It was reckoned that the soil temperature emission effect would catch up in maybe 10 to 50 years' time. We are showing that it seems to be happening rather faster than that."

The latest report by the CEH, just released as part of the ongoing analysis of the 2007 Countryside Survey of Great Britain, compared studies between 1978 and 2007. It found carbon concentration in the top 15cm of soil increased over the first two decades, and decreased between 1998 and 2007. The only exception was arable land, where there was a net loss of carbon, probably because of disruption by ploughing.

"Overall there was no change in carbon concentration ... and [we] cannot confirm the loss reported by the National Soil Inventory," states the report.

Kirk told the Guardian that the Cranfield team were still "confident in our results [that] there was a net loss of carbon". But he said subsequent studies had suggested that "at best" 10% of the loss of carbon was due to climate change, and the rest was due to changes in land use and management, such as conversion of grassland to crops.

Reasons being examined for the difference in results include where and how samples were chosen and analysed and how the data was compiled.

"The amount of carbon in topsoils across England and Wales is about 2bn tonnes, so detecting a change of even 4m tonnes per year is very challenging," said Emmett. "Small differences in methods between the two surveys can therefore have a large effect."


[Environment > Food]
Deals can be good news when not made behind closed doors

Lorenzo Cotula of the International Institute for Environment and Development on the new African land grab
Lorenzo Cotula
The Observer, Sunday 7 March 2010 Article history

Land is life for millions of people across the developing world, central to their livelihoods, culture and identity. But there is growing concern that people's connection to their land is being undermined, and especially in Africa, where land is cheapest and where people's rights to land are weakest.

Arab, east Asian, European, American and Indian investors are all leasing more and more large tracts of farmland in Africa, which some commentators have dubbed "land grabs" and say herald a new colonialism. However, blanket statements are misleading. Agricultural investments could be good news for Africa, bringing jobs, capital, know-how, access to markets and infrastructure – but only if they are done right.

These land leases carry with them huge risks, as recent deals demonstrate. People, especially the poorest, most marginalised communities, can lose access to land. Companies may pay very low rents and make only vague investment promises. The key problem is the lack of transparency in the ways governments make land available to investors. This opens the door to corruption and means the rich and powerful can capture the benefits of land deals without sharing them fairly.

Lands that governments and investors consider "empty" may in fact be used by farmers, herders and gatherers. These people are often not properly consulted and have weak rights to the land and resources they see as theirs. Only a tiny percentage of local farmers in Africa have written documents to back their claims for land rights, even if their families have lived off the land for generations.

A 30,000-hectare biofuels project in Mozambique sparked controversy two years ago because of concerns it would undermine people's access to land and water. A few months ago the Mozambican government cancelled the deal as the company failed to deliver on its promises. But it is not clear what will now happen to the land that had been allocated to the investor.

For deals to deliver real social and economic benefits for local people, in addition to transparency, it is essential that African governments have the legal and technical expertise to scrutinise investment proposals in detail and negotiate hard to get good contracts.

A recent renegotiation of a land lease for a large rubber plantation in Liberia shows the difference that strong political will and world-class legal assistance can make, in terms of greater and more reliable public revenues and enforceable commitments on employment and business opportunities, such as the local processing of the crop.

The more promising investments are those that involve supporting smallholders, rather than large land acquisitions. Some ways of working with local farmers are well tested, such as contract farming, where local farmers cultivate land with support from the company, which then purchases produce at guaranteed price. There is also growing experimentation with a wider range of business models. In a biofuels project in Mali, for instance, farmers have an ownership stake in the project.

Recipient governments can do a lot to promote these more inclusive models. For example, charging proper fees for the land sought by investors would create greater incentives to collaborate with smallholders, to ensure the project is a success.

The decisions taken now will have repercussions for the shape of agriculture, food security and land access in Africa for generations to come. Today's choices must be based on strategic thinking and vigorous, transparent public debate, rather than piecemeal negotiations behind closed doors.

Dr Cotula is a senior researcher for the International Institute for Environment and Development

news20100307gdn2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Food]
How food and water are driving a 21st-century African land grab

An Observer investigation reveals how rich countries faced by a global food shortage now farm an area double the size of the UK to guarantee supplies for their citizens
John Vidal, Juba, Sudan
The Observer, Sunday 7 March 2010 Article history

We turned off the main road to Awassa, talked our way past security guards and drove a mile across empty land before we found what will soon be Ethiopia's largest greenhouse. Nestling below an escarpment of the Rift Valley, the development is far from finished, but the plastic and steel structure already stretches over 20 hectares – the size of 20 football pitches.

The farm manager shows us millions of tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables being grown in 500m rows in computer controlled conditions. Spanish engineers are building the steel structure, Dutch technology minimises water use from two bore-holes and 1,000 women pick and pack 50 tonnes of food a day. Within 24 hours, it has been driven 200 miles to Addis Ababa and flown 1,000 miles to the shops and restaurants of Dubai, Jeddah and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Ethiopia is one of the hungriest countries in the world with more than 13 million people needing food aid, but paradoxically the government is offering at least 3m hectares of its most fertile land to rich countries and some of the world's most wealthy individuals to export food for their own populations.

The 1,000 hectares of land which contain the Awassa greenhouses are leased for 99 years to a Saudi billionaire businessman, Ethiopian-born Sheikh Mohammed al-Amoudi, one of the 50 richest men in the world. His Saudi Star company plans to spend up to $2bn acquiring and developing 500,000 hectares of land in Ethiopia in the next few years. So far, it has bought four farms and is already growing wheat, rice, vegetables and flowers for the Saudi market. It expects eventually to employ more than 10,000 people.

But Ethiopia is only one of 20 or more African countries where land is being bought or leased for intensive agriculture on an immense scale in what may be the greatest change of ownership since the colonial era.

An Observer investigation estimates that up to 50m hectares of land – an area more than double the size of the UK – has been acquired in the last few years or is in the process of being negotiated by governments and wealthy investors working with state subsidies. The data used was collected by Grain, the International Institute for Environment and Development, the International Land Coalition, ActionAid and other non-governmental groups.

The land rush, which is still accelerating, has been triggered by the worldwide food shortages which followed the sharp oil price rises in 2008, growing water shortages and the European Union's insistence that 10% of all transport fuel must come from plant-based biofuels by 2015.

In many areas the deals have led to evictions, civil unrest and complaints of "land grabbing".

The experience of Nyikaw Ochalla, an indigenous Anuak from the Gambella region of Ethiopia now living in Britain but who is in regular contact with farmers in his region, is typical. He said: "All of the land in the Gambella region is utilised. Each community has and looks after its own territory and the rivers and farmlands within it. It is a myth propagated by the government and investors to say that there is waste land or land that is not utilised in Gambella.

"The foreign companies are arriving in large numbers, depriving people of land they have used for centuries. There is no consultation with the indigenous population. The deals are done secretly. The only thing the local people see is people coming with lots of tractors to invade their lands.

"All the land round my family village of Illia has been taken over and is being cleared. People now have to work for an Indian company. Their land has been compulsorily taken and they have been given no compensation. People cannot believe what is happening. Thousands of people will be affected and people will go hungry."

It is not known if the acquisitions will improve or worsen food security in Africa, or if they will stimulate separatist conflicts, but a major World Bank report due to be published this month is expected to warn of both the potential benefits and the immense dangers they represent to people and nature.

Leading the rush are international agribusinesses, investment banks, hedge funds, commodity traders, sovereign wealth funds as well as UK pension funds, foundations and individuals attracted by some of the world's cheapest land.

Together they are scouring Sudan, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Malawi, Ethiopia, Congo, Zambia, Uganda, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Mali, Sierra Leone, Ghana and elsewhere. Ethiopia alone has approved 815 foreign-financed agricultural projects since 2007. Any land there, which investors have not been able to buy, is being leased for approximately $1 per year per hectare.

Saudi Arabia, along with other Middle Eastern emirate states such as Qatar, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi, is thought to be the biggest buyer. In 2008 the Saudi government, which was one of the Middle East's largest wheat-growers, announced it was to reduce its domestic cereal production by 12% a year to conserve its water. It earmarked $5bn to provide loans at preferential rates to Saudi companies which wanted to invest in countries with strong agricultural potential .

Meanwhile, the Saudi investment company Foras, backed by the Islamic Development Bank and wealthy Saudi investors, plans to spend $1bn buying land and growing 7m tonnes of rice for the Saudi market within seven years. The company says it is investigating buying land in Mali, Senegal, Sudan and Uganda. By turning to Africa to grow its staple crops, Saudi Arabia is not just acquiring Africa's land but is securing itself the equivalent of hundreds of millions of gallons of scarce water a year. Water, says the UN, will be the defining resource of the next 100 years.

Since 2008 Saudi investors have bought heavily in Sudan, Egypt, Ethiopia and Kenya. Last year the first sacks of wheat grown in Ethiopia for the Saudi market were presented by al-Amoudi to King Abdullah.

Some of the African deals lined up are eye-wateringly large: China has signed a contract with the Democratic Republic of Congo to grow 2.8m hectares of palm oil for biofuels. Before it fell apart after riots, a proposed 1.2m hectares deal between Madagascar and the South Korean company Daewoo would have included nearly half of the country's arable land.

Land to grow biofuel crops is also in demand. "European biofuel companies have acquired or requested about 3.9m hectares in Africa. This has led to displacement of people, lack of consultation and compensation, broken promises about wages and job opportunities," said Tim Rice, author of an ActionAid report which estimates that the EU needs to grow crops on 17.5m hectares, well over half the size of Italy, if it is to meet its 10% biofuel target by 2015.

"The biofuel land grab in Africa is already displacing farmers and food production. The number of people going hungry will increase," he said. British firms have secured tracts of land in Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria and Tanzania to grow flowers and vegetables.

Indian companies, backed by government loans, have bought or leased hundreds of thousands of hectares in Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Senegal and Mozambique, where they are growing rice, sugar cane, maize and lentils to feed their domestic market.

Nowhere is now out of bounds. Sudan, emerging from civil war and mostly bereft of development for a generation, is one of the new hot spots. South Korean companies last year bought 700,000 hectares of northern Sudan for wheat cultivation; the United Arab Emirates have acquired 750,000 hectares and Saudi Arabia last month concluded a 42,000-hectare deal in Nile province.

The government of southern Sudan says many companies are now trying to acquire land. "We have had many requests from many developers. Negotiations are going on," said Peter Chooli, director of water resources and irrigation, in Juba last week. "A Danish group is in discussions with the state and another wants to use land near the Nile."

In one of the most extraordinary deals, buccaneering New York investment firm Jarch Capital, run by a former commodities trader, Philip Heilberg, has leased 800,000 hectares in southern Sudan near Darfur. Heilberg has promised not only to create jobs but also to put 10% or more of his profits back into the local community. But he has been accused by Sudanese of "grabbing" communal land and leading an American attempt to fragment Sudan and exploit its resources.

Devlin Kuyek, a Montreal-based researcher with Grain, said investing in Africa was now seen as a new food supply strategy by many governments. "Rich countries are eyeing Africa not just for a healthy return on capital, but also as an insurance policy. Food shortages and riots in 28 countries in 2008, declining water supplies, climate change and huge population growth have together made land attractive. Africa has the most land and, compared with other continents, is cheap," he said.

CONTINUED ON newsgdn3

news20100307gdn3

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Food]
How food and water are driving a 21st-century African land grab

An Observer investigation reveals how rich countries faced by a global food shortage now farm an area double the size of the UK to guarantee supplies for their citizens
John Vidal, Juba, Sudan
The Observer, Sunday 7 March 2010 Article history

CONTINUED FROM newsgdn2

"Farmland in sub-Saharan Africa is giving 25% returns a year and new technology can treble crop yields in short time frames," said Susan Payne, chief executive of Emergent Asset Management, a UK investment fund seeking to spend $50m on African land, which, she said, was attracting governments, corporations, multinationals and other investors. "Agricultural development is not only sustainable, it is our future. If we do not pay great care and attention now to increase food production by over 50% before 2050, we will face serious food shortages globally," she said.

But many of the deals are widely condemned by both western non-government groups and nationals as "new colonialism", driving people off the land and taking scarce resources away from people.

We met Tegenu Morku, a land agent, in a roadside cafe on his way to the region of Oromia in Ethiopia to find 500 hectares of land for a group of Egyptian investors. They planned to fatten cattle, grow cereals and spices and export as much as possible to Egypt. There had to be water available and he expected the price to be about 15 birr (75p) per hectare per year – less than a quarter of the cost of land in Egypt and a tenth of the price of land in Asia.

"The land and labour is cheap and the climate is good here. Everyone – Saudis, Turks, Chinese, Egyptians – is looking. The farmers do not like it because they get displaced, but they can find land elsewhere and, besides, they get compensation, equivalent to about 10 years' crop yield," he said.

Oromia is one of the centres of the African land rush. Haile Hirpa, president of the Oromia studies' association, said last week in a letter of protest to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon that India had acquired 1m hectares, Djibouti 10,000 hectares, Saudi Arabia 100,000 hectares, and that Egyptian, South Korean, Chinese, Nigerian and other Arab investors were all active in the state.

"This is the new, 21st-century colonisation. The Saudis are enjoying the rice harvest, while the Oromos are dying from man-made famine as we speak," he said.

The Ethiopian government denied the deals were causing hunger and said that the land deals were attracting hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign investments and tens of thousands of jobs. A spokesman said: "Ethiopia has 74m hectares of fertile land, of which only 15% is currently in use – mainly by subsistence farmers. Of the remaining land, only a small percentage – 3 to 4% – is offered to foreign investors. Investors are never given land that belongs to Ethiopian farmers. The government also encourages Ethiopians in the diaspora to invest in their homeland. They bring badly needed technology, they offer jobs and training to Ethiopians, they operate in areas where there is suitable land and access to water."

The reality on the ground is different, according to Michael Taylor, a policy specialist at the International Land Coalition. "If land in Africa hasn't been planted, it's probably for a reason. Maybe it's used to graze livestock or deliberately left fallow to prevent nutrient depletion and erosion. Anybody who has seen these areas identified as unused understands that there is no land in Ethiopia that has no owners and users."

Development experts are divided on the benefits of large-scale, intensive farming. Indian ecologist Vandana Shiva said in London last week that large-scale industrial agriculture not only threw people off the land but also required chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, fertilisers, intensive water use, and large-scale transport, storage and distribution which together turned landscapes into enormous mono-cultural plantations.

"We are seeing dispossession on a massive scale. It means less food is available and local people will have less. There will be more conflict and political instability and cultures will be uprooted. The small farmers of Africa are the basis of food security. The food availability of the planet will decline," she says. But Rodney Cooke, director at the UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development, sees potential benefits. "I would avoid the blanket term 'land-grabbing'. Done the right way, these deals can bring benefits for all parties and be a tool for development."

Lorenzo Cotula, senior researcher with the International Institute for Environment and Development, who co-authored a report on African land exchanges with the UN fund last year, found that well-structured deals could guarantee employment, better infrastructures and better crop yields. But badly handled they could cause great harm, especially if local people were excluded from decisions about allocating land and if their land rights were not protected.

Water is also controversial. Local government officers in Ethiopia told the Observer that foreign companies that set up flower farms and other large intensive farms were not being charged for water. "We would like to, but the deal is made by central government," said one. In Awassa, the al-Amouni farm uses as much water a year as 100,000 Ethiopians.

news20100307reut

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Ros Krasny
BOSTON
Sat Mar 6, 2010 8:40am EST
Cap-and-trade key to U.S. energy reform: Exelon CEO

(Reuters) - U.S. energy reform has stalled now that the Democrats have lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and Republicans drift to a more negative position, a top industry executive said on Saturday.

"What I see is a series of disjointed, piecemeal approaches that will not yield the optimal solution," Exelon Corp Chairman John Rowe said in remarks prepared for a conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax are the only policy frameworks that could achieve each of the four desired outcomes from energy reform -- cleaner energy, greater security, job creation, and the lowest cost, Rowe said.

"The odds of Congress passing cap-and-trade legislation this year are slim. ... But I believe that we will keep coming back to some kind of legislation that puts a price on carbon emissions as the most efficient answer."

Chicago-based Exelon is one of the largest U.S. electric utilities.

Rowe warned about the cost and confusion from a jumble of regulatory actions pending from the Environmental Protection Agency on gases blamed for warming the planet.

He showed the audience a color-coded slide of 27 pending actions in seven major areas that the EPA expects to take over the next seven years.

"Some of my colleagues in the industry have taken to calling this the 'train wreck' chart," he said.

"You can think of each of the seven colors on this chart as a car on the train -- and each one could cost the utility industry billions to implement.

The regulations could ultimately force a move away from carbon-intensive, coal-fired electricity generation, if only because of their cost, Rowe said.

"We are moving inexorably toward a low-carbon society, but in unproductive and uneconomic fits and starts."

Ultimately, only legislation that places a price on carbon emissions "will efficiently encourage low-carbon investments and discourage high-carbon investments," said Rowe.

Cap-and-trade legislation would not be the job killer that opponents suggest, but instead could lay the groundwork for lasting jobs creation, Rowe said.

"If the train wreck scenario plays out, the only jobs created will be those for attorneys."

(Reporting by Ros Krasny; Editing by Richard Chang)


[Green Business]
Lesley Wroughton - Analysis
WASHINGTON
Sun Mar 7, 2010 1:08am EST
Global climate battle plays out in World Bank

(Reuters) - The United States and Britain are threatening to withhold support for a $3.75 billion World Bank loan for a coal-fired plant in South Africa, expanding the battleground in the global debate over who should pay for clean energy.

The opposition by the bank's two largest members has raised eyebrows among those who note that the two advanced economies are allowing development of coal-powered plants in their own countries even as they raise concerns about those in poorer countries.

While the loan is still likely to be approved on April 6 by the World Bank board, it has revealed the deep fissures between the world's industrial powers and developing countries over tackling climate change.

Both camps failed to reach a new deal in Copenhagen in December on a global climate agreement because of differences over emissions targets and who should pay for poorer nations to green their economies.

Some $3 billion of the loan to South African power utility Eskom will fund the bulk of the 4,800-megawatt Medupi coal-fired plant in the northern Limpopo region and is critical to easing the country's chronic power shortages that brought the economy to its knees in 2008. The rest of the money will go toward renewables and energy efficiency projects.

The battle playing out in the World Bank was prompted by new guidance issued by the U.S. Treasury to multilateral institutions in December on coal-based power projects, which infuriated developing countries including China and India.

The guidance directs U.S. representatives to encourage "no or low carbon energy" options prior to a coal-based choice, and to assist borrowers in finding additional resources to make up the costs if an alternative to coal is more expensive.

In a letter to World Bank President Robert Zoellick, board representatives from Africa, China and India said such actions "highlighted an unhealthy subservience of the decision-making processes in the bank to the dictates of one member country".

GOING GREEN

South Africa, together with Brazil, is a leader among developing countries in fighting climate change and foresees a peak in its greenhouse gas emissions between 2020 and 2025. By contrast, the United States is the only major developed nation with no legal target for cutting its own emissions.

To be fair, the Obama administration wants to cut emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels, or about 4 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, but that plan is stalled in the U.S. Senate.

Britain is better off in lecturing about clean energy -- its emissions were 19.5 percent below 1990 levels in 2008 -- and closure of coal mines and a shift to natural gas primarily for economic reasons explain a large part of the fall.

Eskom has proposed to develop Medupi with the latest supercritical "clean coal" and carbon storage technologies available on the market, which is used by most rich countries.

Still, Medupi will be a major polluter that could make it harder for South Africa to meet its emissions targets.

A U.S. Treasury official told Reuters the United States was in the process of reviewing the Eskom proposal and will develop a position that "is consistent with administration policy and with facts surrounding the project."

World Bank Vice President for Africa, Obiageli Ezekwesili, said South Africa's energy security was key because the country's growth, or lack of it, was felt throughout Africa.

"There is no viable alternative to safeguard Africa's energy security at this particular time," she told Reuters. "This is a transitional investment that they are making toward a green economy and that should count for something."

But the politically connected Center for American Progress in Washington argued in a report last week that the World Bank is a standard-setter for development banks and should push sustainable economic development models in client countries.

"This is a problem for an institution with the moral and financial responsibility to foster large-scale investment in sustainable economic development," it said.

It said the U.S. should press the point in negotiations over a general capital increase for the World Bank, which ponies up billions of dollars a year to fight global poverty.

Environmental groups argue that the Bank shouldn't be allowed to manage a Clean Technology Fund for donors while also funding coal plants that emit tens of millions tons of harmful carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

It is not the first time the Bank is facing a backlash over its support for coal-fired projects. Last year, it backed India's Tata Ultra Mega supercritical coal-fired plant, one of the world's top 50 greenhouse gas polluters.

LOW-EMISSION PATH

Steve Lennon, Eskom's managing director for corporate services, said while Medupi involved a significant chunk of coal, there were also elements of the project that would meet South Africa's Copenhagen commitment.

"The package of projects that we are applying for the funding for is part of South Africa's long-term climate change mitigation scenario, all aimed at putting the country on a low emissions path in the future," said Lennon, who was part of a high-level Eskom delegation who visited Washington recently.

David Wheeler, an environmental expert at the Center for Global Development, said the World Bank should press Western donors to fund the cost gap to help South Africa afford an alternative to coal.

"This recalls a central problem at Copenhagen: ample rhetoric about the need for carbon mitigation in developing economies, but little actual willingness to finance the extra cost of clean technology for countries that remain very poor," he added.

(Additional reporting by Agnieszka Flak in Johannesburg, Editing by Jackie Frank)