Nicole Goldman, owner of “g”Green Design Center in Mashpee Commons, said that people walking through her door are not always aware of the simple steps they can take to become more green.

With her “one-hour speed greening” service, she walks customers through their homes, recommending a switch to plant-based cleaning products, setting up an easy recycling and composting system, and other low-impact ways of greening the household.

Step 1: Reduce Your Consumption

Now in business for four years, Ms. Goldman said she has seen a growing demand for eco-friendly products and services, and the market— and the tax code— are responding.

“People are not sure where to begin. They get overwhelmed and think they have to do everything at once. We help give them a jumpstart,” Ms. Goldman said.

She added that even though some of the products in her store are more expensive than what one might find at Home Depot, the quality and durability makes them a more ecologically responsible choice— and will end up saving customers money.

“Being green is about thinking smartly about the materials you put in your house, what you ingest, and what resources you consume,” she said.

Step 2: Energy Efficiency

Homeowners interested in reducing their energy bills should take advantage of a home energy audit before replacing windows or insulation, she said. She recommended a comprehensive home energy audit provided by Cape Light Compact for a small fee.

“People are a lot more educated and aware about their energy use. They see the costs of fuel going up. It’s not just about saving money, but it’s certainly a forceful incentive,” Ms. Goldman said.

According to Cape & Islands Self Reliance, federal tax credits for household renewable energy have been extended for another year, meaning homeowners and businesses can qualify for rebates of up to 30 percent of the cost of installing wind turbines or solar photovoltaic systems, solar thermal systems for heating and domestic hot water. These systems generate renewable energy on-site and sell any unused electricity back to the grid.

“The paybacks are much quicker now. Not only does the government pay back the cost of the system, you then go on to enjoy free use,” Ms. Goldman said.

Step 3: Compost is Black Gold

If installing solar panels or a wind turbine is not an option, there are still a number of ways to establish eco-friendly habits in the home.

Anne-Marie Runfola, a composting expert and member of the Falmouth Farmers Market board of directors, said that the average household can reduce 30 to 70 percent of its trash by composting food scraps and recycling.

“We don’t have the space for landfills, so we’re trucking and training trash farther. That’s bad for air quality, carbon emissions, and the economy,” she said.

Composting has the added benefit of being an excellent fertilizer for a garden or potted plants. By mixing a carbon source such as leaves with nitrogen-heavy compost, nutrients are “fixed” at the source, helping control nitrogen runoff and erosion, she said.

Using compost instead of fertilizer made from petrochemicals on one’s garden has much less of an impact on the environment— and on the pocketbook, Ms. Runfola said. “By throwing food out, we’re paying for garbage to be taken away, and we’re paying again for fertilizer to go in,” she said.

Step 4: Eat your vegetables

While carbon dioxide has grabbed most of the attention as a greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide and methane are even longer-lasting and effective agents of climate change.

For that reason, the European Nitrogen Assessment reported at conference held this month in Scotland that the best thing people can do to reduce their nitrogen footprint is eat less meat, said Eric A. Davidson, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center.

Livestock are not particularly efficient at converting protein in the food they eat. A cow converts 10 percent of the protein it eats into meat products that humans consume. Pork and chicken are a little better, and fish is probably the best. So eating meat is wasteful in terms of the protein needed in the human diet.

-Eric Davidson, WHRC

That protein inefficiency has upstream effects, Dr. Davidson said. The greenhouse gases created by confined animal feeding operations and the fertilizers required to grow crops to feed them amounted to 6.3 percent of total US emissions in 2009, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Fertilizer and manure runoff to the Mississippi River has created a “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico due to an overabundance of nitrogen, killing fish and other marine life.

Dedicated carnivores need not give up meat entirely, said Dr. Davidson. As demonstrated at the nitrogen assessment conference, simply reducing the amount of meat consumed each day or at each meal makes a difference, while satisfying hunger.

“It’s probably not a big enough difference for mitigating our local problem of nitrogen in our sewage. But for the Mississippi River or global climate change, one thing everyone can do is reduce the portion size and frequency of eating meat,” Dr. Davidson said.

What’s your nitrogen footprint? Calculate it here!

Step 5: Drive less, ride more

With gas prices topping $3.83 per gallon in Falmouth yesterday, people are motivated to find alternatives to driving, said Thomas S. Cahir, executive director of the Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority.

Since last July, the bus company has seen 16 percent more riders on its fixed route service over the previous year. Ridership on the SeaLine from Woods Hole to Hyannis was up by nearly 16.5 percent, while the WHOOSH trolley from Woods Hole to the Falmouth Mall was up by 15 percent.

“We’ve always felt the geography and seasonal aspects of the Cape really scream out for a vibrant and robust transport system. But it’s hard to get people out of their cars,” said Mr. Cahir, pointing to the CCRTA’s new hourly schedule and billing system on its B-bus service as reasons for increased ridership.

According to the American Public Transportation Association, cars and trucks are responsible for 33 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, but a person who commutes 20 miles a day by bus instead of driving can reduce their carbon footprint by 10 percent.

Mr. Cahir said the CCRTA’s bus fleet uses 20 percent biodiesel, increasing the environmental benefits. The CCRTA plans to expand with a route in Bourne and Sandwich by October and a statewide public transportation pass that can be used from Logan Airport to the Steamship Authority and island bus systems by next year.

Step 6: Bike to work

But the most ecologically responsible way to get around is bicycling, said Edward S. Gross, chairman of the Falmouth Bikeways Committee.

“Biking is a non-polluting activity and contributes to our own health. It’s also a community service, reducing congestion on the road,” he said.

Since the Shining Sea Bikeway was extended in 2009, use of the nearly 11-mile path has increased by 50 percent, averaging 1,440 users on a weekend springtime day, he said.

Falmouth can certainly do more to become a bicycling-friendly community, he added, by painting bike lanes and “sharrows” on the roadways and routes to schools. It is something of a catch-22, however, because the town will probably not take these steps unless there is a demand— and until people think it is safe to ride a bike on the road, there won’t be as much demand.

In its annual bid to promote bicycle commuting, the League of American Cyclists has declared May as National Bike Month, with May 16 to 20 as National Bike to Work Week.

In Falmouth, bicycling advocates will be observing Bike to Work Day on May 18, with free coffee, pastries, and information at two booths along the Shining Sea Bikeway.

Six steps… and beyond

So, to recap, there are six things you can do today, this week, or this month to green up your life: don’t buy something that you can’t reuse or recycle;  turn off unnecessary appliances and sign up for a free energy audit; throw away food scraps in a bin and attend a composting workshop for the next steps; trade in some of your meat for fresh vegetables;  take the bus, carpool, or bike to work or on your errands.

Anything else? Let us know how you celebrate Earth Day!

Wes Jackson, founder of The Land Institute, at MBL's Lillie Auditorium

In order to solve humanity’s biggest crises—hunger, malnutrition, environmental degradation, and even climate change—farmers and ecologists need to get married.

That was the message Wes Jackson, founder and president of The Land Institute of Salina, Kansas, brought to Woods Hole last week.

In a room filled with local scientists and backyard farmers, one could imagine a harmonious marriage.

If only the two hadn’t gotten divorced in the first place.

Speaking at MBL’s Lillie Auditorium on Feb. 2, Dr. Jackson’s wisdom was disguised in his easy Kansas manner.

“We need a system with an ecological world view,” he said, resting his elbow on a bent knee at the front of the stage.

“We need to start where climate change began: agriculture.”

A geneticist-agronomist and author who has received a number of prestigious awards– including the MacArthur Fellowship in 1992 and the Right Livelihood Award in 2000– Dr. Jackson has dedicated his life’s work to developing perennial grains, including wheat, rice, sorghum, and prairie flowers.

Agricultural colonialism?

Since wheat was first developed as a domestic crop in 9000 BCE, farming has meant cultivating annual monocultures, Dr. Jackson said. But while great advances in civilization were made possible by the spread of agriculture, it also led to the destruction of the environment that supported it.

Wheat was the “pulverized coal of the soil. That’s where climate change had its beginnings,” he said. “If we were to eat, nature had to be subdued or ignored.”

Recognizing that scientific discoveries—including Copernican theory, Galileo’s discoveries, and Darwin’s theory of the evolution of species—would not have been possible if humanity had remained hunter-gatherers, Dr. Jackson pointed out that these advances were based on the “extracting economy” of various European empires, especially the British empire.

Whether people are mining for coal or engineering seeds to increase crop yields, there are consequences to this world view, he said.

With soil erosion in many parts of the world exceeding natural replacement levels and fertilizer runoff creating “dead zones” in places like the Gulf of Mexico, “we’re losing the stuff we are made of to the sea,” Dr. Jackson said.

Fifty years after Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring exposed the ecological threat posed by pesticides, the industry has doubled in size, he added. Though fertilizers led to the “green revolution,” the energy required to produce them outpaces the amount of calories created.

If only we would learn…

Humanity is operating on a “3.45 billion-year-old imperative” that causes us to seek out carbon-based resources to sustain ourselves, Dr. Jackson told the audience.

“There was never a need to practice restraint. It has to be something learned,” he said. “If we can save our soils, we can keep alive what we’ve learned on this long journey.”

Cultivating perennial poly-cultures can solve a number of agricultural headaches, from drought, pests, and the amount of work required to plow, plant, and harvest the crops each season, he said.

In partnership with researchers in China and Sweden, Land Institute researchers around the world are working on perennial varieties of the world’s three major major grains, rice, corn, and wheat– as well as oil-producing plants like mustard and sunflowers.

Dr. Jackson acknowledged the concept he and his colleagues are developing will not be popular with seed suppliers, and fertilizer, pesticide, and oil companies.

But even without millions in corporate and government funding, The Land Institute has been able to refute the arguments often made by pro-genetic engineering types and chemical corporations.

A paper published in 2008 by Land Institute researcher Stan Cox showed that perennial crops have the potential to  feed a growing, ever-hungry population without destroying nature.

In this vision, the “sustainable agriculture industry” finally ceases to be an oxymoron– and in fact, could provide the hope for greater food security across the globe.

Considering that in 2006, prices for basic grains jumped 80 % for wheat, 60% for corn, and a whopping 320% for rice, the world’s hungry need all the help they can get.

If the uprising in Egypt is at least partly due to rising food prices– in a country where people barely survive on $2 a day– it’s possible that revolutionizing agriculture could also lead to word peace.

The perennial promise

Unfurling an 18-foot poster comparing perennial wheat to its domestic sister species, Dr. Jackson pointed out that the perennial variety’s long root system can find water where the annual plant cannot.

Perennial wheat has been found to fix carbon in the soil and reduce nitrate and water losses typically incurred at each harvest.

Furthermore, its productive life span of five to 10 years means a heartier crop that can compete with weeds and resist pests, reducing the need for pesticides.

Perennial wheat strains developed by The Land Institute have only been able to produce 40 percent of the seeds of an annual variety, said Dr. Jackson, who estimated the perennial strain will require up to 50 more years of interbreeding to match–and eventually exceed– that level of productivity.

But it will likely be worth the wait. Lab tests have shown that flour made from perennial wheat has 40 percent more protein, 10 times more folate and lutein, and up to 600 percent more nutrients than traditional wheat flour.

Dr. Jackson’s books, including the 2010 Consulting the Genius of the Place: An Ecological Approach to New Agriculture, provide plenty of food for thought on the subject of sustainable agriculture, in which biologists and backyard gardeners may find common ground.

I wonder what would be served at the wedding.

They came to learn advanced satellite imaging techniques, and left at the end of September with maps that will help their countries manage their forests and take part in a potential global carbon credit trading system.

The pan-(bio)mass challenge

The WHRC is leading an effort to create the first pan-tropical biomass map that will demonstrate the future effects of deforestation and land use change across the globe. This information is key in developing the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) policy initiative being negotiated under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Mukund Srivastava (left), of the Indian Forest Survey, works with Tina Courmier of the Woods Hole Research Center and Abel Siample of the Zambia Forestry Department, to develop a map that shows the land use and carbon-sequestration capacity of India.

Under the REDD system, countries like the United States that emit a large amount of greenhouse gas could purchase carbon credits from countries like Gabon that have a lot of forest, but need cash to continue to protect it.

The system is also designed to encourage countries like Kenya to build up its forests, reversing the trend of deforestation that threatens to increase not only global carbon emissions, but also the ability of its citizens to grow food and find safe drinking water.

Using the maps, governments and tropical forest stakeholders will be able to monitor and track changes to land cover, helping inform policy decisions, said Joseph Kellndorfer, a WHRC scientist co-leading the pan-tropical mapping effort.

Tropical deforestation is estimated to be the cause of about 17 percent of man-made global carbon emissions, which makes it an easy target for combating climate change, said Dr. Kellndorfer.

“These maps give us a first estimate of what we’re talking about trading,” he said.

As the scholars taking part in the workshop indicated, deforestation is caused by a variety of factors. While logging is an obvious source, agricultural expansion—exacerbated by population pressures and a turn to the cultivation of cash crops—is also taking a major toll on tropical forests across Africa and Southeast Asia.

In Colombia, a decades-long guerilla war is having an impact even in remote forests; in Bolivia, hydroelectric projects threaten to flood the lush jungle of the Amazon basin.

The forest for the trees

Poverty is the number one barrier to forest conservation, said Edward Ssenyonjo, a remote sensing specialist with the Ugandan National Forest Authority. “More than 80 percent of people depend on the natural environment, mainly forests, to survive. This is compounded by a population growth [rate] of 3.2 percent,” he said.

His colleague, Abel Siample, of the Zambia Forestry Department, said that investment in alternatives to charcoal production and agricultural expansion are the only way to stop encroachment in protected forests.

Joint forest management committees in Zambia and India are giving disenfranchised people a say in how REDD funds are distributed, said Mukund Srivastava, of the Indian Forest Survey.

With a structure based on equality for women and the rural poor, these committees are developing a model so that a portion of REDD revenue returns to the community to attract tourism or sustainable industries and build up infrastructure.

People realize it when they hit the wall, and there is no more forest, but they cannot stop without alternatives. It’s a human dilemma: we do not change our behavior until it becomes too late.

-Nadine Laporte, associate scientist

However, said WHRC associate scientist Nadine Laporte, throwing money at the problem is not a sure way to protect diminishing forests. Sensitive to the socio-economic hardships that people in developing countries face, she is working with the scholars to find solutions to deforestation while meeting the needs of impoverished people.

“In Africa, deforestation is done by people who are trying to feed their families,” said Dr. Laporte, pointing out that people are driven to cut down the forest in a quest to find wood for cooking and heating.

Think global, act local

Peter Ndunda, of the Green Belt Movement, and WHRC Associate Scientist Nadine Laporte go over Peter's map of Kenya

Although REDD was not adopted by the UNFCCC Conference of Parties that met in Copenhagen last December, Dr. Laporte said it is only a matter of time before a global carbon-trading system is in place.

Already, there are several bilateral agreements in place between developing nations and high carbon-emitting countries and states. Progress on REDD achieved in Copenhagen will continue at the next COP meeting in Cancun, Mexico, starting in late November.

Shifting the focus of international climate talks to helping communities and developing nations solve their own problems, the field survey sessions that Dr. Laporte and her colleagues take part in reach some of the most rural or forested areas in the world.

Community capacity-building is the name of the game for Peter Ndunda, a GIS specialist with the Kenyan Green Belt Movement (GBM), a non-governmental organization founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai.

By building up tree nurseries and embarking on a nationwide tree planting campaign, the GBM has been able to stem the trend of deforestation in part of Kenya. In addition, GBM offers civic and environmental education programs that help people understand how forests help retain soil and water, thereby supporting food production and safe drinking water.

A map of Kenya's forest cover shows the GBM's progress, but huge areas in the east remain deforested.

While GBM has made great strides in the last 20 years, the biomass map Mr. Ndunda created at WHRC shows how much further the country has to go.

Indeed, great swaths of Kenya were colored in brown on his map, indicating low forest cover; while the green areas where GBM is active nonetheless indicate that human activity has spilled over the boundaries of designated conservation areas.

“How do you help communities increase their yields without compromising future generations?” Mr. Ndunda asked.

With additional income from REDD, communities will have the time to wait for the trees to grow, while also improving their farmland, he said.

“REDD provides a great opportunity to help resolve the global challenge of poverty. This is a huge economic and ecological benefit that we cannot quantify.”

If you teach a man to map…

Nguyen Hanh Quyenv, of the Vietnamese Academy of Science and Technology, works on a biomass map that she says will help her country develop forest conservation policies

Some of the scholars taking part in the WHRC workshop were able to create a map of the forest cover as well as the biomass capacity of their country.

Using readily-downloadable data from free sources like Google Earth–as well as sophisticated software and the 160 processing systems owned by the WHRC– the scholars were able to create forest-cover maps of their entire country with a 15-meter resolution, and biomass maps with 500 meters resolution.

Another benefit offered through the WHRC program is the use of satellite radar imaging, a powerful tool that can penetrate the cloud cover that tends to persist over tropical forests, Dr. Kellndorfer said.

That way, forest managers will have more accurate “snapshots” of a forest region, without gaps in data due to cloud cover.

That was a difficulty for Edersson Cabrera, a remote sensing expert with the Colombian ministry of the environment. Though he has been collecting data on the country’s diverse range of forests for the past two decades, thick cloud cover in some years led to gaps in knowledge about how land use had changed over time.

Eric Armijo, of the Friends of Nature Foundation in Bolivia, said the maps he is working on with the WHRC will give his organization the tools it needs to make sure conservation policies are in place— and working.

“It’s a powerful way of pushing the decision-makers,” he said.

While we have to take the issue of nitrogen (and other nutrient) pollution seriously, we also need to examine the unintended consequences of sewering the entire coast. What impact will pumping and discharging millions of gallons of water have on the aquifer, not to mention, on CO2 levels in the atmosphere? What are some ways we as residents can reduce our nitrogen output on an individual scale?

Last week, I went to an interesting talk by USGS hydrologist Denis LeBlanc, who described the role of the Sagamore Lens in supplying the Upper Cape’s fresh water.

I’d been skeptical that pumping wastewater all over town to a centralized location for treatment, and possibly discharging it through an outfall pipe off of Nobska Point, would not impact our groundwater levels. But according to Mr. LeBlanc, even at a rate of 3-5 million gallons a day, that kind of discharge is peanuts, compared to the volume of the resource.

Whether or not an outfall pipe is a good idea is still up for debate. Experts, including Mark Rasmussen of the Coalition for Buzzards Bay, say that the strong currents at Nobska would create enough “flushing” to dilute the wastewater (treated to tertiary standards) so that it would not impact marine life or public health. But still– in a world where water is considered to be “blue gold,” is it responsible to discharge it into the ocean? Even if we can’t drink it, couldn’t we reuse it?

Eco-logical design

At a conference at WBNERR last spring, environmental designers presented some very intriguing ideas on how to turn wastewater into a resource.

These weren’t pie-in-the-sky dreamers, or con artists trying to sell you back your own pee as drinking water. These were businessmen who had built their reputation on some common-sense notions: why should you flush your toilet or water your lawn with drinking water? Why should we still be using the 2,000 year-old Roman aquaduct system to sewer our communities?

To the speakers, the saying, “the solution to pollution is dilution” is simply not the case. Instead, they suggested a closed-loop system, in which gray water is continually re-used within a building, with minimal loss.

Patrick Lucey, president of Aqua-Tex, a water management consultancy firm in British Columbia, showed slides of a LEED-certified complex he designed on a working waterfront section of Victoria.

The system is designed to reuse the gray water from sinks and showers and collect rainwater from the roof. The “wastewater” is then treated in a centralized sewage treatment that one might mistake for a luscious garden.

Wastewater from toilets is treated to a standard that could be safely used for doing laundry or watering non-edible plants, Mr. Lucey said.

The system could go several steps further by including a bio-refinery to utilize solid waste and garbage as bio-fuels for heating; co-generation technology to create electricity; and removing nitrogen and phosphorus from effluent for use as fertilizer.

Engineered ecology

Closer to home, projects at the Wrentham Mall and Gilette Stadium in Foxboro (home of the Patriots) have achieved 75-95 % water reuse by employing ecological design principles. If every large public building could do that, we’d go a long way in reducing the 1,200 gallons that Americans consume on average per day (through showers, toilets, laundry, dishwashers, and food production).

Even closer to home, a Woods Hole-based firm, Todd Ecological Design, has set the standard for using nature’s principles to deal with wastewater. In municipalities, golf courses, factories, and campuses worldwide, the EcoMachines designed by Dr. John Todd, one the founders of New Alchemy Institute, use micr0-bacteria, plants, and invertebrates to effectively digest the harmful components of wastewater. Designs often include tropical greenhouse gardens that help make this process possible, even in cold climates.

However, as Falmouth’s wastewater superintendent pointed out after meeting with Jon Todd (Dr. Todd’s son), the EcoMachine cannot get the nitrogen content low enough to meet the limits set by DEP.  In order to prevent further estuarine degradation, some parts of Falmouth need to reduce nitrogen to 3 milligrams per liter– the equivalent of 1.5 drops in a bathtub– which will likely require the services of a modern wastewater treatment plant.

You are what you eat

But there are still possibilities for concerned residents to reduce their nitrogen output. Eating less meat is one idea proposed by Dr. Eric Davidson of the Woods Hole Research Center. While this might be a startling idea to some, consider the fact that the amino acids in animal protein are made up of nitrogen, and to a large extent, are passed out of the body.

If we’re eating meat three times a day, we have a bigger nitrogen footprint. For those who don’t want to be vegetarian, thinking about portion sizes, or whether they’re eating beef, or less nitrogen-demanding pork, chicken, or fish, makes a difference.

-Eric Davidson, sr. scientist, Woods Hole Research Center

Another reason to cut down meat consumption takes a global view: in places like Brazil, rainforest is being cleared at alarming rates in order to create cattle pasture. Cutting forests reduces the earth’s ability to process CO2, and also releases extra greenhouse gases (like NO2) into the atmosphere. So, if not just for the local environment, eating meat (or chosing not to) from these places can make a big difference in terms of climate change.

What else can you do?

Finally, debate over sewering sometimes leaves out small, yet significant components of our community’s total nitrogen output: stormwater and fertilizers. If we could eliminate chemical-based fertilizers from our lawns and gardens, Falmouth could reduce nitrogen in estuaries by at least 10 %. (For info on how to reduce your lawn’s N-footprint, see the Falmouth Friendly Lawns brochure.)

And if the town could install more catch basins to deal with stormwater, less nitrogen (and other pollutants) would flow directly from the roads to sensitive ecosystems. One fun fact to remember as you’re driving in a rainstorm: that first flush of rainwater from the road brings NOx emissions from your tailpipe directly to the nearest water source.

So, a few nuances to consider as we head down the road to figuring out how to create a wastewater design to meet demands of the next century. And we didn’t even get into I/A systems, such as Nitrex or RUCK.

Special thanks to David Dow for putting his two cents in on these issues. As always, we welcome comments, questions, and perspectives.

Nora Greenglass, a research assistant at the Woods Hole Research Center, shared her impressions as a negotiator for the UN program for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) with members of the Woods Hole Science and Technology Education Partnership (WHSTEP) last week.

Nora Greenglass shares her impressions of the UN climate change conference with members of WHSTEP

From Falmouth to Copenhagen

Nora Greenglass was among 8,000 party negotiators in Copenhagen, as world governments, NGO’s, and activist groups converged on the Danish capital for COP 15.

It was not her first UN climate conference, but the first one where she had to wait for five hours in the snow with other accredited observers, just to get into the conference hall.

That’s when the observers did just what 30,000 climate change activists had been doing over the course of the 2-week conference: they protested.

“They barred civil society from entering when the heads of state were there. It was a bone of contention. This was supposed to be an open process,” she said. “Needless to say, I did not get much work done that day.”

Ms. Greenglass went to Denmark with a team of other researchers from WHRC (and other Woods Hole Consortium participants from the MBL and WHOI) to give scientific input on aspects of climate change that rarely make the headline news.  Among those are the REDD initiative and the impacts of rising greenhouse gas emissions on the world’s oceans.

The UN-REDD Programme is aimed at tipping the economic balance in favour of sustainable management of forests so that their formidable economic, environmental and social goods and services benefit countries, communities and forest users while also contributing to important reductions in greenhouse gas emissions… The immediate goal is to assess whether carefully structured payment structures and capacity support can create the incentives to ensure actual, lasting, achievable, reliable and measurable emission reductions while maintaining and improving the other ecosystem services forests provide.

-the UN Collaborative Program on REDD

Reducing poverty and emissions?

The main purpose of the conference this year was to develop a “cap and trade” system for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. With the Kyoto Protocol past its prime, the outcome of Copenhagen was meant to set a new blueprint for setting emissions reduction targets, and ways to measure progress toward those goals.

However, negotiations broke down between developing nations and some of the biggest emitters (including the BASIC countries, Brazil, South Africa, India, and China) on the terms of such a high-stakes deal.

From the point of view of the developing nations (led by Africa), the system would allow industrialized countries to keep polluting, thus endangering their chances of survival. In the case of small island nations or places where desertification threatens arable crop land, climate change is indeed a matter of life or death.

But as Ms. Greenglass pointed out, the countries that produce the lion’s share of CO2 need to act now to reduce their emissions, and need  incentives to do so.

The World is Waiting for US

Despite the worldliness of the conference, Ms. Greenglass said that the elephant in the room was legislation currently stalled before the US Senate. (Last fall, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would require polluters to offset their greenhouse gas emissions, but a Senate version is not expected to pass.)

“The world is waiting for Congress, and we know where that’s going,” she said.

President Obama made an attempt to save the day, crafting an 11th-hour document known as the Copenhagen Accord, with 29 other nations (out of 194). Among other things, this non-binding document states that the US will reduce its emissions by 17% (from 2005 levels) by 2020. However, this pledge requires congressional approval– in an election year, in a recession.

A few positives did come out of Denmark in the waning days of the conference, Ms. Greenglass said.

• The REDD negotiations are nearly complete, with a “relatively prominent” place in US legislation, and a favorable view from US industry.
• In addition, the US pledged $100 billion to go towards climate adaptation measures, technology transfer, and forest protection for vulnerable countries by 2020.
• The US pledged $1 billion to help implement REDD; an additional $3.5 billion was committed by France, Norway, Australia, Japan, and the UK.
• An agreement was made on a transparent mechanism for evaluating the performance of each nation’s emissions reductions through an independent review process.

Pat Harcourt, an education specialist with WBNERR, asked how much of a role science plays in determining the outcome of policy.

Ms. Greenglass said that the specific targets, such as the 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F) maximum for global temperature rise, are based on sound  science, but overall, the negotiations are “frighteningly political.”

“We need to peak global emissions by 2020,” she told WHSTEP members.

These days, Ms. Greenglass and thousands of other science policy consultants are heading back to the drawing board in preparation for COP 16, this November, in Cancun, Mexico.

Tracy Johns in her office at the Woods Hole Research Center

It’s been a month after COP 15, the UN Climate Change conference that was supposed to give the world a new system for reducing carbon emissions.

A month to reflect, regroup, and respond to this reporter’s questions about what happened, and what didn’t, in Copenhagen.

From Woods Hole to Copenhagen

Tracy Johns is a research associate and policy advisor at the Woods Hole Research Center who focuses on the role of forests in stabilizing the world’s climate. She is an advisor to several countries on the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degredation (REDD) initiative, intended to create a carbon trading system that would adequately compensate countries that do not cut their remaining forests.

Having attended the last five COPs (Conference Of Parties), Ms. Johns said that the negotiations in Copenhagen, by comparison, were chaotic. Thousands of people from official delegations, NGO’s, and protest movements, crowded into a noisy meeting hall. It was difficult to find out where negotiations were taking place, even those related to REDD. When a delegation of African nations walked out of talks on carbon credits, she said, the conference really broke down.

With the REDD initiative dependent on the overall treaty, the process is stalled for now. Ms. Johns said she can sympathize with the African and developing nations, which are likely to feel the most deleterious effects of climate change, and yet are not responsible for the lion’s share of greenhouse gas emissions. However, she said, the stalled negotiations do not help anyone.

The Copenhagen Accord was eventually drafted by the US, China, Brazil, India, and South Africa, which other nations did not adopt. Because the UN Climate Change treaties must be adopted by consensus (remember the stalled Kyoto Protocol?) that means that there is no blueprint going forward. But, Ms. Johns said, there is still a lot that countries, especially the US, can do to reduce carbon emissions on a domestic level.

Seeing the forest for the trees

Rainforests have been dubbed the “lungs of the world” for their ability to “inhale” carbon dioxide (CO2) and “exhale” oxygen (O2), a well-known chemical exchange that sustains our every breath. In this way, trees are able to store or “sequester” large amounts of CO2, one of the critical greenhouse gases responsible for climate change.

But as trees are clear-cut for lumber or to make way for soybean plantations or cattle ranches, much of that carbon sequestered in trees is released back into the atmosphere. In addition, the trees are no longer able to inhale the atmospheric CO2 that is increasing in concentration each year. From Brazil to Gabon to Indonesia, deforestation is responsible for 12 to 18 percent of the world’s carbon emissions, said Ms. Johns.

“We will not be able to avoid the devastating effects of climate change without stopping deforestation,” she said. “Forests are a vital piece of the puzzle.”

In working out the jigsaw of economics versus the urgency of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the REDD program aims to put a value on forests that are removing CO2 from the atmosphere every day, free of charge. Not only will this give developing nations a monetary incentive to protect their remaining forests, it will encourage consumers to make responsible choices, Ms. Johns said.

A fair trade?

While her focus is on the global carbon credit market, provisions in the Waxman-Markey bill– passed last June by the House of Representatives– allow companies to purchase carbon “0ffsets” for their emissions by contibuting to reforestation efforts or rainforest conservation, both in the US and abroad, Ms. Johns said. This initiative could make the US the largest carbon trading market in the world, she added, since the European Union does not allow REDD credits.

“As the legislative process moves forward, most of the bills being discussed include pretty strong pieces that wold allow a REDD to happen,” she said. “But the numbers President Obama has announced are far below our goals.”

In her work with some of the agricultural stakeholders in Brazil, for example, Ms. Johns has found that they would gladly find alternatives to cutting down the rainforest, but their practices reflect global demand for cheap beef and soybeans.

“One of the reasons why climate change legislation is important is that we’re not paying for the cost of pollution. If we understood the costs, it’s much cheaper to consume sustainably,” she pointed out.

“It’s got to be a collaborative effort between consumers and providers. Without a change in consumption practices, there will be no incentive to change.”

What can you do?

While forests in the US Northeast enjoy a fair amount of protection, Ms. Johns said people living here can have a part in reducing deforestation. She encourages us to do a little research to learn about the origins of products, and make an effort to support industries that use sustainable practices.

• The Institute for Market Transformation to Sustainability is one website that makes it easier to find (and verify) eco-certified products.
• One common sense tip in regard to forests would be to eliminate paper-based products like paper plates from your shopping list, and in the case of necessities like toilet paper, purchasing a post-consumer recycled brand.
• Shop locally for “green” building and household products at the “G” Green Design Center in Mashpee Commons.

That was one of the questions that Neil D. Bettez, of the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, spent five years as a doctoral student in Falmouth trying to answer. Working with Eric Davidson, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center, and colleagues at Cornell University, Dr. Bettez came across a local nitrogen source that is often overlooked: emissions from cars and trucks.

“We’d like to say it’s only the power plants in the Midwest [that are responsible], but the fact that a lot of cars driving on Cape contributes to local impacts. What we drive, and how much, really matters on a local level,” Dr. Bettez said.

‘The more you put in, the more you put out’

Those driving around down Route 28 between 2003 and 2007 may have noticed bottles with funnels on top sitting under trees at the Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Reserve (WBNERR) near the Mashpee-Falmouth town line, or on the lawn at the Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth. These contraptions collected rainwater dripping from tree leaves, which Dr. Bettez analyzed for nitrogen content.

His results showed that areas of the forest within 30 feet of a road contained the highest amounts of nitrogen. He also found more nitrogen underground near the road, pointing to a nitrogen source that is leaching into the groundwater, and eventually into nearby water bodies.

“Understanding sources of nitrogen is a key first step in managing and mitigating nitrogen pollution,” he said. “The more you put in, the more you get out. Even kids know that.”

The research conducted by Drs. Davidson, Bettez and their colleagues suggests that road runoff may have been underestimated in the past, and it could contribute as much as 10 percent of the nitrogen load to some local water bodies.

According to Dr. Bettez, atmospheric nitrogen has been on the rise since the Industrial Revolution. Through fertilizer production and fossil fuel combustion, humans now release as much reactive nitrogen (NOx and NH3) as is created naturally from lightning and nitrogen-fixing plants, such as soybeans or blue-green algae.

Due to cleaner emissions standards, power plants in the US now produce 29 percent less NOx than they did 30 years ago; and despite better emissions standards for cars, Americans also drive twice as much as they did in the 1970s, contributing 33 percent more nitrogen, said Dr. Bettez.

A hidden killer

Excess nitrogen in waterways can lead to eutrophication, resulting in low-oxygen conditions that makes it difficult for marine animals to survive. Algae thrives on the nitrogen, but sudden algal blooms can lead to smelly die-offs, unpleasant swimming conditions, and degraded eelgrass, an important habitat for shellfish.

Because most of the nitrogen that settles on leaves is retained in the forest, Dr. Bettez said, wastewater is still the single largest source of nitrogen in the water. However, he added, the forest’s capacity to hold that nitrogen is limited. In large quantities, he said, NOx and NH3 in the atmosphere can lead to tree “die back” due to acidification, an effect similar to acid rain.

While nitrogen deposition on the Cape is still too little to impact local forests, it could reach a saturation point, and end up in waterways, Dr. Bettez said. “My research points out that it will continue to be a bigger problem as people drive more.”

According to Ivan Valiela, of the Marine Biological Laboratory’s Ecosystems Center, different parts of Waquoit Bay could receive an additional 31 to 79 percent nitrogen load from rain and snow falling directly on the water.

“There is an additional atmospheric deposition directly onto the surface of the water of the bay, and this can be large,” Dr. Valiela said.

“Management action such as sewering would not affect this direct atmospheric source… a consideration, given the current interest in installation of municipal sewers.”

In comparison to wastewater and atmospheric deposition, the nitrogen from road runoff is “trivial,” at about four percent of the total load to the watershed, Dr. Valiela said.

However, Dr. Davidson said that the nitrogen contained in road runoff is significant enough to warrant better management in coastal zones. Analyzing the runoff he sampled during storms from Woods Hole Road, Oyster Pond Road, and Quonset Road, Dr. Davidson found that even small residential roads contain significant amounts of nitrogen, from a combination of car exhaust, lawn fertilizers, and animal waste.

“Roads are conduits for moving all that nitrogen rapidly. Where roads lead to water bodies, they contribute directly to the nitrogen load,” he said.

To reduce road runoff, the town could install “wells” that shuttle water from storm drains through layers of soil, where microbes can break down nitrogen and other hazardous byproducts, Dr. Davidson said.

Global problem, local solution

Because nitrogen loading is a local problem, Dr. Bettez said that local solutions, such as driving less, or driving hybrid vehicles, will help reduce nitrogen emissions.

Another way to tackle nitrogen emissions would be to follow California’s lead in developing regulations that would limit ammonia, a compound that is created from NOx by highly efficient catalytic converters, said Dr. Davidson.

Dr. Bettez noted that NOx is responsible for smog and atmospheric ozone, while ammonia plays a role in creating haze. Ammonia is also deposited very close to its source, which means that emissions from cars can fall out onto nearby water bodies, Dr. Davidson said.

Both Dr. Bettez and Dr. Davidson added that dietary changes could make an impact on global nitrogen production, noting that it takes significant amounts of fertilizer to produce animal feed, and animals produce manure, another large source of nitrogen that is released into the environment

“If we’re eating meat three times a day, we have a bigger nitrogen footprint,” said Dr. Davidson. “For those who don’t want to be vegetarian, thinking about portion sizes, or whether they’re eating beef, or less nitrogen-demanding pork, chicken, or fish, makes a difference.”