Just as the world thought it was winning the war on carbon emissions, a major conference has been told of a new threat. Paddy Woodworth reports on the problem of burning peatlands
The charming cathedral of St Nikolai in Greifswald, on Germany's Pomeranian coast, must have heard many warnings of damnation, and promises of salvation, down the last eight centuries. Last month, hosting the fifth European Conference on Ecological Restoration, the warnings and promises were of a strictly terrestrial nature, but they were no less dramatic for that.
The most disturbing warning came from Marcel Silvius of Wetlands International (WI). For anyone who accepts the evidence that carbon emissions are a major factor in global climate change, but thinks the Kyoto Protocol has the problem covered, his report from the peatland tropical forests of Indonesia was a stark wake-up call.
We tend to think of industry and the combustion engine as the main sources of carbon emissions. But Silvius reminded us that wetlands, and especially peatlands, store the equivalent of 75 per cent of the carbon already in the atmosphere.
So the rapid degradation of peatlands, through draining, drying out and burning, is releasing greenhouse gases in quantities that put the Kyoto targets in a startling new perspective. Under the protocol, Germany has reduced its emissions by 15 per cent, representing 50 million tons of CO2 per annum, requiring an investment of approximately $10 billion (€7.8 billion). A serious effort and serious money, you might think. And indeed it is.
But carbon emissions caused by peatland drainage in south-east Asia have increased in the same period to 700 million tons. The cost, using the German figure as a yardstick, is $140 billion (€109.7 billion). And here's the rub: the carbon released into the atmosphere by denuded and drying peatlands is not covered by Kyoto at all, because the protocol focuses on industrial emissions.
And when the drained peatlands burn, carbon emissions in the region go from chronic to catastrophic. The fires in 1997/98 came to world attention because they sent dense clouds of toxic smog to distant cities such as Singapore, full of western tourists and business people. It was much less widely reported that these infernos released 2.57 gigatons of greenhouse gases, 40 per cent of the total emitted into the world's atmosphere that year. (A gigaton is 1,000 million tons.) Here's another rub: Kyoto aims to reduce emissions by just 0.1 (yes, zero-point-one) gigatons a year.
Even veteran environmentalists emerged reeling from Silvius's intervention. The news from the planet had just got much worse, again.
"Even if all countries decrease their CO2 emissions from fossil fuels to 1990 levels," Silvius said, "atmospheric CO2 will keep rising dramatically because of emissions from degraded peatlands." Despite this frightening prospect, the general tone of the conference, and of Silvius's own conclusions, were actually remarkably upbeat.
Few speakers promised salvation, but almost everyone offered practical proposals for reversing humanity's headlong slide towards environmental hell. Ecological restoration is the science and practice of returning degraded ecosystems to a healthy state. Its proponents are unusual in the green movement in that they tend to accentuate the positive, to light candles rather than curse the darkness.
Speaking later to The Irish Times, Silvius stressed that his point is not that Kyoto is futile, but that it needs to be drastically amplified.
He also highlighted another dimension to the problem, and then made it part of his solution. People who live on peatlands are generally more afflicted by poverty than people living elsewhere. But if they are economically rewarded for sound ecological practices, Silvius argued, they can become a very significant force for reversing environmental degradation.
The lush tropical peatland forests of Indonesia do not look at all like an Irish bog - at least until they are drained and burned. But the problems of rural deprivation on land that is poor - agriculturally speaking - are familiar enough.
Poverty and environmental degradation are locked in a vicious circle in this region, Silvius said. Desperately poor people will inevitably over-exploit their environment if they have no alternatives, and this in turn leads to lower returns on their efforts, and ultimately to collapsing ecosystems.
Silvius, and a number of other speakers at the conference, argued that ecological restoration must go hand in hand with poverty alleviation and sustainable development, or it will go nowhere. The Indonesian forests are hotspots for biodiversity, but campaigns to save rare species cut no mustard where children are going hungry.
"Conservation organisations have often gone to Indonesia with a totally wrong approach," he said. "They say, 'we want to build an orang-utan centre here'. The people say, 'but we need a health centre' and kick them out. But if you go with an integrated 'pro-poor' and restoration policy, both the authorities and the people are very receptive."
WI is assisting local people in the province of Kalimantan to build dams along thousands of kilometres of drainage ditches, reversing the desiccation of the peatlands.
Small-scale managed fish-ponds have long been part of the economy, but WI is proposing expanding these into much larger units, so that sustainable aquaculture can support the human population while contributing to restoring the wetlands.
The organisation is also working on the restoration of forestry in denuded areas, and planning for its sustainable exploitation. Every step, Silvius insists, takes place only after gaining the support of local communities through extensive consultation.
These initiatives, of course, are only small beginnings, and a global effort is required to reverse wetlands degradation. "If we really want to save these wetlands, European governments must provide credits. But this is business, not charity, and such credits are an exchange for services, in this case the reduction of carbon emissions." In its final declaration, the conference endorsed Silvius's call for a Global Peatlands Fund.
The idea that ecologists must engage with economists was developed by James Blignaut, an economist from South Africa, and James Aronson, an American ecologist based in France. Advocating "the restoration of natural capital", they argued that the depletion of the stocks which provide "ecosystem services" such as clean air, clean water, and fertile soil has now reached a critical point.
Mainstream economists tend to claim that technology will always provide the solution to environmental problems, Blignaut and Aronson continued, so that natural capital can always be substituted by man-made capital. But it is becoming obvious that we are approaching critical limits which point to collapse.
They gave an example from the fishing industry. Previously, we invested in fishing fleets (man-made capital) to exploit fish stocks (natural capital). Now, however, stocks of fish have been exhausted to a point where they can no longer reproduce themselves. So economic logic as well as ecological concerns should dictate that we invest in (or restore) natural capital as a matter of urgency.
"The schism between economists and ecologists must be bridged, not tomorrow, but yesterday," Blignaut and Aronson said. "The restoration of natural capital is not peripheral science, it is serious business, a major contribution to global welfare. We cannot afford near-misses when we are talking about a sample size of one. The Earth is not replicable for another experiment."
While these two papers made the most impact at the conference, dozens of smaller sessions were dedicated to the theme of "land-use changes in Europe as a challenge for restoration". Few of the 400 delegates (from 47 countries) were Irish, but Catherine Farrell of Bord na Móna spoke on the rehabilitation of a large Mayo bog after peat production ended, showing that it had resulted in the restoration of plant and animal communities, and improved local water quality.
The thorny question of how to manage land freed up by the reduction of intensive farming in the EU was much debated. Several delegates argued that simple abandonment of traditionally farmed land might reduce biodiversity almost as much as intensification would do. Variations on the theme of "farming for nature" were discussed, but no firm conclusions were reached. Once again, however, the point that human activity is part of the ecological equation, and not always a negative force, was highlighted.
On a field trip to the Peene river valley, we were able to walk through peat mires full of orchids, with a white-tailed sea eagle hunting through large flocks of duck in the near distance, and cranes calling overhead.
The countryside in former East Germany has survived rather well, thanks in no small part to the heroic efforts of Greifswald University's Michael Succow at a very difficult time. Succow's message to the conference, that "we need to stop our war on nature and work with her, not for the sake of nature but for the sake of mankind", needs to be heard by a wider audience.
The websites
Society for Ecological Restoration:
www.ser.org
European section of the Society for Ecological Restoration: www.ser.org/europe
Greifswald Conference Declaration: www.ser.org/europe/Greifswald.asp
Wetlands International: www.wetlands.org