For half the world's population, every meal depends on an open fire that is fueled by wood, coal, dung, and other smoke-producing combustibles. These indoor cookfires consume large amounts of fuel and emit carbon dioxide and other dangerous toxins into the air, blackening the insides of homes and leading to respiratory diseases, especially among women and children.
Biogas, however, takes advantage of what is typically considered waste, providing a cleaner and safer source of energy. Biogas units use methane from manure to produce electricity, heat, and fertilizer while emitting significantly less smoke and carbon monoxide than other sources of fuel. Access to an efficient, clean-burning stove not only saves lives-smoke inhalation-related illnesses result in 1.5 million deaths per year-it also reduces the amount of time that women spend gathering firewood, which the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) estimates is 10 hours per week for the average household in some rural areas.
The IFAD-funded Gash Barka Livestock and Agricultural Development Project (GBLADP) helped one farmer in Eritrea, Tekie Mekerka, make the most of the manure his 30 cows produce by helping to install a biogas unit on his farm (similar to the unit that Danielle saw in Rwanda with Heifer International). Now, says Mekerka, "we no longer have to go out to collect wood for cooking, the kitchen is now smoke-free, and the children can study at night because we have electricity."Additionally, Mekerka is using the organic residue left by the biogas process as fertilizer for his family's new vegetable garden.
In Rwanda, the government is making biogas stove units more accessible by subsidizing installation costs, and it hopes to have 15,000 households nationwide using biogas by 2012. While visiting with Heifer Rwanda, Danielle met Madame Helen Bahikwe, who, after receiving government help to purchase her biogas unit, is now more easily cooking for her 10-person family and improving hygiene on the farm with hot water for cleaning.
In China, IFAD found that biogas saved farmers so much time collecting firewood that farm production increased. In Tanzania, the Foundation for Sustainable Rural Development (SURUDE), with funding from UNDP, found that each biogas unit used in their study reduced deforestation by 37 hectares per year. And in Nigeria, on a much larger scale, methane and carbon dioxide produced by a water purifying plant is now being used to provide more affordable gas to 5,400 families a month, thanks to one of the largest biogas installations in Africa.
If you know of other ways people are making the most of their waste and would like to share it with us, we encourage you to leave a comment or fill out our agriculture innovation survey here.
On the nine hour bus ride from Johannesburg, South Africa to Maputo, Mozambique yesterday, I had a chance to read the latest TIME Magazine and was surprised-and pleased-to see an article on an issue that Worldwatch has been covering for a long time-the benefits of grass-fed livestock systems for the climate.
The article highlights how not all meat is created equal. All of the ingredients used to raise livestock conventionally-including artificial fertilizers and monocultures of maize and soybeans-are highly dependent on fossil fuels. In addition, modern meat production requires massive land use changes that release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, including the destruction of grasslands and rainforests in South America and the degradation of ranging lands in Africa (See the Worldwatch report: Mitigating Climate Change Through Food and Land Use).
Rotational grazing systems, on the other hand, can actually sequester carbon in soils. And because the animals are eating grass, not grain, artificial fertilizer isn't required to produce feed. These systems also don't have to rely on the long-distance transportation of fertilizer, grain, or other inputs. And while the manure produced at confined animal feed operations, or CAFOs, is often considered toxic waste because it is produced in such massive quantities, the manure produced on smaller-scale farms is considered a valuable resource, helping to fertilize crops.
While raising-and eating- grass-fed beef might not completely reverse climate change, it's a valuable tool for producers and consumers alike in helping lower the amount of GHGs emitted because of our food choices.
Current atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are a bit over 380 parts per million, whereas more scientists are now saying we need to get back down below 350 ppm. Via Bill Scher, a group of economists came together to look at a least cost solution for reducing CO2 concentrations, admirable, and elicited this response:
... However Robert J. Shapiro, chairman of the U.S. Climate Task Force and Sonecon, an economic advisory group, said the goal of reducing carbon concentrations below their current levels is unrealistic.
"The only prospect of reaching 350 is if we came to develop a technology that would pull greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere -- that is, pull the concentrations out of the atmosphere," Shapiro said. "That is probably impossible without a technology that we can only conceive of today." ...
Mr. Shapiro, realizing that biology probably wasn't in your core curriculum way back when, I introduce you to ... the tree. This innovative, if ancient, technology could probably at least help get us there. I'd also like to remind everyone bummed out by the latest job loss and unemployment numbers that FDR's New Deal Civilian Conservation Corps put people to work planting 3 billion of them.
"Political Support for Cap & Trade Will Not Overcome Its Practical Shortcomings," says Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
A new analysis from two EPA enforcement attorneys (writing as private citizens) rebuts the central promises behind Obama's announced "cap-and-trade" approach to tackling global warming, according to a press release from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
The analysis, entitled "Keeping Our Eyes on the Wrong Ball", argues that cap-and-trade will not work, but that a carbon tax, matched with a 100% rebate, can shift the incentive structure sharply enough to produce the sort of rapid shift away from fossil fuels that the latest data tells us is necessary. The authors, Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel of carbonfees.org, have experience in cap-and-trade and other forms of emission trading. They argue that the cap-and-trade system is designed to keep the costs of fossil-fuel energy relatively low, which is counter-productive to the purpose of the program. They further argue that:
The wrong analogy is being used: This is not a relatively simple transition to an already-abundant fuel source, like the one involved in combating acid rain, that did rely on cap-and-trade. It's more like the phase out of ozone-destroying CFCs, which relied on a fees.
Cap-And-Trade schemes are inherently difficult to enforce, and this is one is further flawed by a questionable system of offsets.
Carbon sequestration and "clean coal" are non-existent technologies that may never work, and cannot be developed fast enough.
In short, as with the stimulus plan and Obama's approach to health care reform, it looks as if short-term political pragmatism is on a collision course with long-term real-world pragmatism. On the flip, I highlight several significant aspects of the analysis.
There was an interesting piece in the Fashion section of the NYTimes this Sunday that is a little weird but it gets into some pretty fun stuff.
The piece follows a kid from Brooklyn who is hell bent on becoming an organic farmer. Trucker hats, Carhartts, and Pabst were the fashion but now some are putting the heart behind the fashion and finding the funk in farming.
"The Billyburg scene has changed, said Annaliese Griffin, who contributes to a blog called Grocery Guy. "Having a cool cheese in your fridge has taken the place of knowing what the cool band is, or even of playing in that band," she said. "Our rock stars are ricotta makers."
The same is true for Sarah Love, an Oklahoma University political science graduate and sometimes young Clay Pope a former DC staffer turn conservation lobbyist who have formed an organization that helps farmers become more environmentally friendly and companies to offset their carbon emissions.
STATE BLOGS
For half the world's population, every meal depends on an open fire that is fueled by wood, coal, dung, and other smoke-producing combustibles. These indoor cookfires consume large amounts of fuel and emit carbon dioxide and other dangerous toxins into the air, blackening the insides of homes and leading to respiratory diseases, especially among women and children.
