Tag Archives: climate-change
Tilbury Power Plant Closes After Biomass Grant Refused
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/50907714-0374-11e3-b871-00144feab7de.html#ixzz2bqG9g4oW By Guy Chazan One of Britain’s oldest power stations will close on Tuesday after the government refused to award it a subsidy to switch from coal to biomass. RWE npower, the energy supplier, said it had taken the “difficult decision” to shut down Tilbury on the river Thames in Essex after the government said a project to convert it to biomass was ineligible for its new low-carbon support mechanism. The decision brings the curtain down on a plant that has been generating electricity for 46 years and casts a shadow over Britain’s plans to source a growing proportion of its power from wood pellets. Tilbury B was scheduled to close under an EU environmental measure known as the Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD). Under the legislation, Tilbury was allocated a quota of 20,000 hours of operation from January 1, 2008. In 2011, RWE decided to switch it to biomass for the remainder of its LCPD hours, due to end at midnight on Tuesday. RWE had hoped to convert the plant from coal to biomass, which would have given it an extra 10-12 years of life. But after the Department of Energy and Climate Change decided the project was ineligible for its low-carbon energy subsidy, the “contract for difference”, RWE said the plan was “no longer economically viable”. The decision will be a blow to the biomass industry but will be welcomed by environmentalists, who have argued that increasing demand for wood pellets as a feedstock for biomass plants could lead to the destruction of biodiverse forests, as more land is taken up for tree plantations. A fire at the Tilbury biomass plant in February damaged storage units holding thousands of tonnes of wood pellets, weeks after the facility began commercial production. Continue reading
Biotechnology Is Panacea For Africa’s Green Revolution
Page last updated at Sunday, August 11, 2013 gm-cropsAfrica missed the Green Revolution, which helped Asia and Latin America achieve self-sufficiency in food production, missed the Industrial Revolution, but Africa cannot afford to miss another major global ‘technological revolution’, which can help boost our agricultural sector. Africa is often described by derogatory remarks such as the “dark continent, the hungry continent, the disease-plagued continent” and these remarks are further reinforced by scaring statistics produced by global bodies such as the World Health Organisation and UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, which rate Africa as the continent with the highest disease burden and mortality from malnutrition, absence of protein and non-availability/shortage of food. “For me, I think the time has come for us to use this new technology availed us to change that perception and unfortunate remarks”. These were very strong statements that came from Mrs Shakirat O. Ajenifujah-Solebo, Chief Scientific Officer and Head of the Plant Biotech and Tissue Culture Laboratory of Nigeria’s National Biotechnology Development Agency during an interaction with the Ghana News Agency at the ongoing International Environmental Biosafety Training for 22 research scientists and regulators from 11 countries across the globe. The training course organised by the Michigan State University (MSU) College of Agriculture and Natural Resources in Collaboration with the Plant Breeding and Genetics Program, is to offer participants science-based information, skills, and resources to help them evaluate and address biosafety issues in their respective countries. The knowledge, information, and experience gained through this course would help participants contribute towards the development of environmentally sound and safe use of agricultural biotechnology. Using a participatory approach, the course will foster linkages and provide opportunities for networking among participants to exchange their experiences and establish regional collaborations. Answering a question on whether Africa really needs such a technology, Mrs Ajenifujah-Solebo said with passion that Africa must embrace agricultural biotechnology or risk being excluded from a major technological revolution that has resulted in increased food production in South America, North America and Asia. To her, the technology was already with Africans because some countries in Africa like South Africa, Burkina Faso, Egypt and Sudan had already commercializing Genetically Modified (GM) crops whilst other countries like Nigeria, Uganda, Ghana, Cameroon and Kenya were undergoing Confined Field Trials (CFTs) backed by some form of legislation. She explained that with emergence of climate change, crop pests and high production costs, it was urgent that Africa invested in developing agriculture biotechnology if the challenges were to be addressed. “In the coming years, growing populations, stagnating agricultural productivity and increasing climate change will make it more difficult for Africa to fight poverty and malnutrition. And to confront these challenges, many African countries are assessing a range of tools and technologies, including agricultural biotechnologies which hold great promise for improving crop yields,” she added. Dr Mojisola O. Edema, Associate Professor (Food Microbiology/ Biotechnology) of the Federal University of Technology, Akure, told the GNA Africa needs not re-invent the wheel but can borrow the technology and domesticate it to suit the needs of various African countries. Though biotechnology is not the panacea to the world problems it is to complement existing technologies and also help avoid the environmental damage caused by conventional methods of agricultural production. With the efforts being made to push biotech in African agriculture, the adoption of it has been slow in most places, due to what she described as the lack of political will from most governments, but was quick to commend Burkina Faso who started with a Presidential Decree and subsequently developed their regulations. “I think we will need the drivers or the promoters to drum it into the ears of our decision-makers that we are losing a lot of benefits by not adapting these technologies and we must also encourage the “Seeing is Believing” strategy to reinforce that,” she added. In most parts of the continent, farmers are witnessing a rapid decline in crops yield and this is attributed to over use of the soil, pest and other infections that have drastically affected the ability of the crops to produce more. Recent development in biotechnology, especially genetic engineering, has made it possible for the inclusion of desired traits in staple foods that are common to the average Africans. The introduction of vitamin fortified Sorghum and Maruca-Resistant Cowpea are expected to assist farmers to improve on productivity as well as on income and their health conditions. She noted that the application of science and technology on agriculture has the potentials of solving the problems of food security in Africa and there was the need for Africa to prioritize properly to keep its citizens from hunger against the ever-growing population in the near future. “There are immense opportunities in biotechnology for the benefit of mankind. “Unlike what we now have, chemicals are used to control pests and diseases of plants, which are unsafe for consumption and environmentally not friendly, aside of it being expensive. But with science and technology, pest resistant plants are now bred. We have worked on the genes of cowpeas, tested them and seen that they are safe”, she spoke with confidence. With the current increasing world population serving as a major challenge for the future and predicting to hit 9 billion by 2050, 80 per cent of whom will live in developing and transition countries, each hectare of land in 2050 will need to feed 5 people compared to just 2 people in 1960. To feed this number, food production will have to increase by at least 70 percent on essentially the same area of land with less available water. This will then require ‘sustainable intensification – growing more from less’ by using land and resources more efficiently with the aim of meeting the current needs while improving the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. In addition we must conserve natural resources and preserve ecosystem function while minimizing, adapting to and where possible, reversing the affects of climate change. Experts argue that to address these challenges, genetic engineering and other technologies must be allowed to play a crucial role. As has been with many new technologies, people are keen to embrace the benefits but are concerned about the potential risks. Dr Ibrahim Atokple, a Senior Research Scientist at the Savannah Agricultural Research Institute, Tamale, Ghana, and the principal investigator for the Maruca-Resistant Cowpea project in Ghana, in an interaction with GNA earlier on, also agrees that Africa cannot be left behind on the global drive to take advantage of bioengineering. “All the argument we are hearing against GMOs are based on personal opinions and not science.” To him, the world is a global village and Africa can no longer live in isolation. Therefore, the time has come for African countries to open up to the technology as presently there is no scientific evidence that shows that the technology is dangerous to humans or the environment. Touring some Green Houses in the MSU and the CFTs, the African participants expressed their amazement at how the United States have invested so much in infrastructure and urged African governments to do likewise if we wish to catch up with the West. According to Samuel Timpo, Senior Programme Officer and Socio-Economics Specialist of AU/NEPAD Africa Biosafety Network of Expertise, although many African countries have developed some features of their biosafety systems to regulate agricultural biotechnology, a look across the continent reveals the need for regulatory capacity strengthening. This observation he says led to the political leadership of the continent endorsing the need for biotechnology and biosafety to co-evolve so that regulation promotes innovation while at the same time safeguards human health and the environment. “Efforts are currently ongoing towards creating an enabling legal environment in member states for the regulation of biotechnology and for the practice of good science to ensure that the benefits of biotechnology are safely harnessed”, he added. To him, African countries must move onto a path of sustainable growth and development and be effectual participants in the thriving global bioeconomy, which will require overcoming the challenges of food, feed and fibre that confronts sub-Saharan Africa today and biotechnology could provide the needed useful tools in agriculture, medicine and industry to address these. “Any good technology could potentially help improve the welfare of our people but must be utilized in a safe and responsible manner. The future for Africa should be one that sees member states with functional biosafety regulatory systems and harmonized processes that will ensure that advances in science and technology are safely and sustainably used to enhance agricultural productivity, food and nutritional security, and incomes”, he asserted. Africans are always complaining about what happens in the USA and some parts of Europe and yet we travel to these countries and consume their GM products. On our own market shelves we have imported GM products like cooking oil, tomato puree and other cereals but we criticize the technology. Why don’t we adopt the technology and domesticate it to address our own demands. To Dr William Hutchison of the Department of Entomology of the University of Minnesota, USA, “Much has been written, the Science is here with us, it is a matter of the Will to resolve to improve quality of life for smallholder farmers, on less land”. By Linda Asante-Agyei Source: GNA – See more at: http://www.ghanabusinessnews.com/2013/08/11/biotechnology-is-panacea-for-africas-green-revolution/#sthash.PljMavW1.dpuf Continue reading
Surge Of Investment In Farming Threatens £5trn Catastrophe
TOM BAWDEN FRIDAY 09 AUGUST 2013 The threat posed to agriculture by environmental hazards such as climate change and water scarcity is now so great that it could wipe as much as £5 trillion off the value of the world’s farm land, equipment and stock in any one year, a heavyweight study is warning. Agriculture in the UK and worldwide is under huge financial and physical stress. A surge of investment on the back of a boom in the global food commodities market meets an increasingly precarious physical environment for farming – creating a dangerous asset bubble that threatens to burst, according to the Oxford University research. As a result, the total value of the world’s estimated $14trn worth of “farmland assets and agricultural capital stock” could see trillions of dollars wiped off its value in a single year – with a one in 20 chance that the figure could hit $8trn (£5.2trn) the report said. “Potential losses at this scale would be catastrophic and no private insurer could cope. This is going to be an issue in the UK and globally,” said Ben Caldecott, programme director at the University of Oxford’s Smith School, adding that he was not able to quantify the risk for Britain. The research team based their risk estimates on traditional insurance methodologies and stressed that an $8trn devaluation would only result from an environmental catastrophe. “It could be a tipping point in biodiversity decline or habitat degradation making agricultural zones significantly less productive. Or, more likely, a combination of things coming together,” he said. But the chance of smaller, but still enormous, write-offs across the global agricultural industry in the coming years is high, as, for example, increasing cases of drought and flooding make land less productive and the influx of investors becomes an exodus. This would have far-ranging and unexpected consequences across the world, the report finds. “For example, the Arab Spring has demonstrated how water supply constraints in North Africa, coupled with extreme weather in Russia can affect food security and prices and contribute to governmental collapse and broader geopolitical tension,” the report said. The report doesn’t predict which parts of the world would be hit hardest by environmental hazards, how they might suffer or what it would mean for food supplies and future investment in farming. However, farming experts said any environmental misfortune big enough to prompt huge write-downs would clearly have a huge impact on food supplies, as well as future investment in farming. It could also hit people’s pensions because many of the investors that have piled into the agriculture sector in recent years have been pension funds. Farmland is increasingly bought as an investment, to be managed by another party, rather than by farmers. Financial institutions see it as an opportunity to improve their returns by switching their money from flagging stock markets into fast growing agricultural land and food production. But Mr Caldecott warns they could be in for a shock because many have based their decision on whether to buy into farming on financial models that largely ignores the dangers posed by environmental risk factors. “The amount of value potentially at risk globally is significant,” Mr Caldecott said, drawing an analogy between the financial crisis that is still hurting the global economy and the problems faced by agriculture. “The financial crisis has highlighted how the relationship between the owners of an asset and the actual physical asset can become disconnected in the chase for increasing financial returns,” Mr Caldecott said, referring to the packaging up of thousands of high-risk US subprime mortgages into bonds that resulted in huge banking losses that are widely regarded to have triggered the recession. “It also highlighted how investments which can be viewed as completely rational within one set of analytical and institutional structures can nevertheless be completely irrational outside those structures. The orthodoxy of not valuing environmental externalities is one such set structure that is coming under increasing pressure for change,” he added. The environmental risk factors include increasing weather variability and water scarcity, loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, increased risk of agricultural diseases, viruses and pests and overfishing. The report notes, for example, that “in a warmer climate, there will be an increased risk of more intense, more frequent and longer lasting heatwaves… models project increased summer dryness and winter wetness in most parts of northern, middle and high latitudes.” Economic factors include greenhouse gas and land use regulations, which are designed to help the environment, but will reduce the value of farmland, at least in the short term. The growth in agricultural land values has been phenomenal, recording a four-fold increase in the past 10 years, and is still growing fast in most parts of the world since. In the UK, prime arable farmland – a benchmark – has more than tripled to £8,000 an acre in the past decade, according to Savills, recording a 6 per cent rise in the first half of 2013 alone. Continue reading
