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No more cetacean extinctions! It’s our last chance to save the vaquita Updated for 2026

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The ‘vaquita’ is a beastie with some remarkable claims to fame. It’s one of the two smallest cetaceans in the world, just managing to nudge about 1.5 metres (5ft) long on a good day.

Its name means ‘little cow’, though it is also called the ‘desert porpoise’ or ‘Gulf of California porpoise’ as it lives near arid Baja California. They are the only porpoises found in warm waters.

It was only described by science in 1958, and has a tiny geographic range at the north end of the Gulf of California, also known as the Sea of Cortez. At about 4,000 km2 (about the size of Cornwall) it’s among the smallest ranges of any marine mammal.

It’s possibly one of the cutest sea mammals around (with dark eye patches giving it a passable panda look), although very few people have ever gotten a good look at a live vaquita…

    Oh yes. And it’s likely to become extinct in just a few years.

    Fishery bycatch – what a way to go …

    There are fewer than a hundred vaquitas left on the planet, and we humans are reducing that number by a staggering 17% each year!

    The truth is – we should be able to save the vaquita. We know where it lives, and we know that we humans are its biggest threat. Vaquitas are caught and killed as bycatch in a fishery targeting fish called totoaba.

    The swim bladders of the totoaba are prized as a delicacy for soup in China so there’s lucrative financial incentive for illicit fishing. It just so happens that totoaba are about the same size as a vaquita, which is really bad news for the porpoises when indiscriminate gillnets are used that catch them, too!

    By stopping fishing entirely, or moving fully to fishing methods that can’t catch porpoises ‘by accident’, and protecting the vaquita’s habitat, this could and should be one of the easiest marine animals to conserve.

    Many of the recognisable marine critters at greatest risk of extinction, such as hammerhead sharks, whale sharks, sea turtles & manta rays have vast ranges, and are much trickier to protect fully from human impacts.

    That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, of course, but it does surely make it all the more ridiculous if we can’t get our act together to save the vaquita.

    They have a ‘marine protected area’ – but it’s too small

    In fact, in 2005 a ‘marine protected area’ was designated specifically to protect this tiny porpoise, covering the central part of its range (see map, right). But it’s surrounded by heavily-fished areas, and ongoing fishing – both legal and illegal – is killing more and more porpoises.

    A much larger protected area has now been proposed (see map) in which fishing would still take place, but the gill nets in which the vaquitas are so often fatally entangled would be banned.

    As Nampan, the North Americas Marine Protected Areas Network reports: “Experts worldwide are in agreement that the surest way to prevent the extinction of the vaquita is to eliminate the use of entangling nets in the areas where vaquitas occur.

    “The immediate removal of such nets must be accompanied by one or more financial mechanisms to compensate the fishermen who can no longer pursue their livelihoods in the same way. This means that economic alternatives and vaquita-safe fishing methods must be developed and made available in the fishing communities of the northern Gulf.

    “It is crucial for the CEC to support Mexico’s pursuit of these objectives. Without immediate, decisive action, the vaquita could become the second cetacean species to have been rendered extinct as a direct consequence of human activity in the present century.”

    We owe it to the vaquitas to try to save them.

    Is that enough cetacean extinction now?

    This generation has already seen the extinction of the Baiji, a Chinese river dolphin. Other species are declining fast thanks to humanity, with ship strikes, pollution, habitat destruction, and irresponsible fishing taking an increasingly heavy toll.

    The vaquita is top of the list, but the future is also bleak for the Maui’s dolphin, the North Atlantic right whale, the Ganges river dolphin, the Western Pacific gray whale, the Irrawaddy dolphin and many more.

    Then there are the ice whales – narwhals, beluga & bowheads – whose habitat is being destroyed and plundered as it melts away.

    We should be able to save the vaquita. But do we collectively care enough to do it? The President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, is considering introducing a new law that could protect the vaquita’s home.

    Our encouragement will surely help him to reach the right decision.

     

     

    Action: Sign the petition to send a message to Enrique Peña Nieto and make sure he knows we want to save the vaquita.

    Find out more about vaquitas and how to save them: vaquita.tv.

    Willie Mackenzie is part of the Greenpeace UK biodiversity team. He works mostly on oceans and fishy issues. Twitter: @williemackenzie

    This article was originally published on the Greenpeace blog.

     




    387445

New technologies can help poor farmers – just not the ones you’re thinking of Updated for 2026

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During recent years we’ve become used to hearing that the answer to looming food security challenges is technology. For example, more sophisticated pesticides, genetic modification and machinery to grow food at ever-greater scale.

It is an especially believable narrative because – broadly speaking – this what has delivered some level of food security to most people during the period of explosive population growth that started during the 20th century, and continues today.

But while marking a success at one level, there are serious downsides, not least seen in how modern farming is responsible for driving several worsening global ecological trends.

These include climate change caused by the build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; the progressive pollution of ecosystems (especially aquatic and marine ones) with excess nitrogen and phosphorous; and the loss of biological diversity, caused by both of the above and habitat loss, mostly driven by conversion of more natural ecosystems to farmland.

Agriculture is also responsible for depleting resources that are vital for its own future – not least soils and freshwater.

That we cannot go on like this is not in doubt. The question is, will more technology present solutions that will actually work? The answer to that is an emphatic ‘yes!’ – although perhaps not the kind of technology many generally associate with farming policy.

A glimpse as to what technologies might work better in producing more food while protecting the natural systems we depend upon was glimpsed this week at the Slow Life Foundation‘s Slow Life Symposium taking place in the Maldives.

Digital technologies supporting India’s farmers

Rikin Gandhi is Chief Executive of an organization called Digital Green, and he presented to Symposium participants some of the methods being successfully deployed by his organization in dramatically increasing yields among small-scale farmers.

His basic idea is to exploit a particular fact of life that is seen right across the world. It stems from where most farmers get most of their new ideas from: namely other farmers.

Government training and information schemes can make an impact, so can advice from agrochemical companies (albeit biased at times), but by far the most convincing source of new ideas is other farmers.

Working with this reality Digital Green set out to improve yields through helping farmers make videos that would be shown to other farmers nearby.

Using off-the-shelf equipment including pocket video cameras and pico projectors, Digital Green assists farmers to generate content for use among tribal communities living in remote areas without electricity. (see photo)

Battery powered video and projection enables best practice to be shared even among illiterate groups where the written word is near to useless. Gandhi got results with better farming methods adopted more quickly and more cost-effectively than earlier attempts to do the same.

Indeed, Digital Green has demonstrated that for every dollar spent, the system persuaded seven times as many farmers to adopt new ideas as an existing official program of training and visits.

Twice the rice, half the water

Another measure of success is how many farmers have been empowered through new knowledge to the point where they are producing twice as much rice with half as much water – thereby helping to address the twin emerging challenges of food and water security, while keeping people on the land (and out of the fast expanding cities) by increasing their incomes.

And when farmers have more knowledge about soil health and the role of composts as at least a partial alternative to commercial fertilisers then opportunities are presented to cut costs while reducing environmental impacts.

Other technologies can complement this basic means of sharing ideas, including mobile phones. Although most farmers are still not yet connected in this way, the proportion that are is growing fast, in turn offering the prospect to lever further value from existing agricultural resources in terms of people and land through, for example, sharing of information about market conditions and weather forecasts.

There is of course a cautionary note to strike, as Gandhi observes: “During the Green Revolution era it was all about agricultural technology being transferred to farmers. That did boost yields but had issues coming with it.

“The same thing can be said about information technology. This is powerful but also needs to be supported through partnerships and working with social organisations. We need to think about the context for the technology, and the people using it, not just the technology.”

The new ‘intensification’: producing more, from less

Alongside a flipping of the narrative relating to agricultural technology is a change in tone regarding the very concept of intensification. For decades that idea has been associated with ever more chemical inputs, with all the attendant consequences as seen for example in resource depletion and greenhouse gas emissions.

Those close to the emerging challenge of how best to achieve food security while maintaining ecological integrity see a new definition here too.

‘Intensification’ is now regarded as empowering farmers to use their ingenuity and local resources more effectively, rather than being based on strategies to import energy intensive inputs.

David Monsma, Executive Director at the Aspen Institute‘s Energy and Environment Programme, emphasised that “Smallholder farmers remain the backbone of food supply systems in most low income and many middle income countries.”

Their “awareness of and access to agricultural technologies and techniques is often lacking”, he added, but that fact opens up a huge opportunity for sustainable growth in both food supply, and rural incomes:

“Training in production techniques and technologies that conserve soil and water, or that reduce waste and loss of crops, communications tools such as cellphones and videos and organizational innovations such as setting up market-oriented farmer based organisations, can lead toward more sustainable intensification while broadly increasing food security.”

The smart money is backing this new and more joined up farmer-focused approach, with big funders such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (also see here) and the Clinton Development Initiative ‘going local’ and backing strategies that help small actors do better.

Technologies for farmer empowerment

Among the approaches delivering results are those that improve storage and market access, thereby cutting food waste in the agricultural landscapes where food is grown.

Micro-finance and micro-insurance are proving vital facilities for many farmers in enabling them to make investments and to manage risk. Farmer empowerment via training is also increasingly seen as a vital plank for future food security.

Perhaps this shift of emphasis toward communications technologies and intensification based on farmer empowerment marks the opening of a new chapter in our multi-millennial efforts to ensure we have enough to eat.

It comes not a moment too soon. The days when technology could be thrown at the challenges linked with feeding ourselves and it assumed that the ecological damage was an acceptable price to pay for cheap food are over.

No longer is it feasible to trade one set of priorities at the expense of the others, for if nature doesn’t function neither will our food system. One vital strategy for navigating these tight straits is the empowerment of small scale farmers.

 

 

Tony Juniper is a campaigner, writer, sustainability advisor and leading British environmentalist. For more than 25 years he has worked for change toward a more sustainable society at local, national and international levels. His website is at tonyjuniper.com.

 

 




386927

New technologies can help poor farmers – just not the ones you’re thinking of Updated for 2026

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During recent years we’ve become used to hearing that the answer to looming food security challenges is technology. For example, more sophisticated pesticides, genetic modification and machinery to grow food at ever-greater scale.

It is an especially believable narrative because – broadly speaking – this what has delivered some level of food security to most people during the period of explosive population growth that started during the 20th century, and continues today.

But while marking a success at one level, there are serious downsides, not least seen in how modern farming is responsible for driving several worsening global ecological trends.

These include climate change caused by the build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; the progressive pollution of ecosystems (especially aquatic and marine ones) with excess nitrogen and phosphorous; and the loss of biological diversity, caused by both of the above and habitat loss, mostly driven by conversion of more natural ecosystems to farmland.

Agriculture is also responsible for depleting resources that are vital for its own future – not least soils and freshwater.

That we cannot go on like this is not in doubt. The question is, will more technology present solutions that will actually work? The answer to that is an emphatic ‘yes!’ – although perhaps not the kind of technology many generally associate with farming policy.

A glimpse as to what technologies might work better in producing more food while protecting the natural systems we depend upon was glimpsed this week at the Slow Life Foundation‘s Slow Life Symposium taking place in the Maldives.

Digital technologies supporting India’s farmers

Rikin Gandhi is Chief Executive of an organization called Digital Green, and he presented to Symposium participants some of the methods being successfully deployed by his organization in dramatically increasing yields among small-scale farmers.

His basic idea is to exploit a particular fact of life that is seen right across the world. It stems from where most farmers get most of their new ideas from: namely other farmers.

Government training and information schemes can make an impact, so can advice from agrochemical companies (albeit biased at times), but by far the most convincing source of new ideas is other farmers.

Working with this reality Digital Green set out to improve yields through helping farmers make videos that would be shown to other farmers nearby.

Using off-the-shelf equipment including pocket video cameras and pico projectors, Digital Green assists farmers to generate content for use among tribal communities living in remote areas without electricity. (see photo)

Battery powered video and projection enables best practice to be shared even among illiterate groups where the written word is near to useless. Gandhi got results with better farming methods adopted more quickly and more cost-effectively than earlier attempts to do the same.

Indeed, Digital Green has demonstrated that for every dollar spent, the system persuaded seven times as many farmers to adopt new ideas as an existing official program of training and visits.

Twice the rice, half the water

Another measure of success is how many farmers have been empowered through new knowledge to the point where they are producing twice as much rice with half as much water – thereby helping to address the twin emerging challenges of food and water security, while keeping people on the land (and out of the fast expanding cities) by increasing their incomes.

And when farmers have more knowledge about soil health and the role of composts as at least a partial alternative to commercial fertilisers then opportunities are presented to cut costs while reducing environmental impacts.

Other technologies can complement this basic means of sharing ideas, including mobile phones. Although most farmers are still not yet connected in this way, the proportion that are is growing fast, in turn offering the prospect to lever further value from existing agricultural resources in terms of people and land through, for example, sharing of information about market conditions and weather forecasts.

There is of course a cautionary note to strike, as Gandhi observes: “During the Green Revolution era it was all about agricultural technology being transferred to farmers. That did boost yields but had issues coming with it.

“The same thing can be said about information technology. This is powerful but also needs to be supported through partnerships and working with social organisations. We need to think about the context for the technology, and the people using it, not just the technology.”

The new ‘intensification’: producing more, from less

Alongside a flipping of the narrative relating to agricultural technology is a change in tone regarding the very concept of intensification. For decades that idea has been associated with ever more chemical inputs, with all the attendant consequences as seen for example in resource depletion and greenhouse gas emissions.

Those close to the emerging challenge of how best to achieve food security while maintaining ecological integrity see a new definition here too.

‘Intensification’ is now regarded as empowering farmers to use their ingenuity and local resources more effectively, rather than being based on strategies to import energy intensive inputs.

David Monsma, Executive Director at the Aspen Institute‘s Energy and Environment Programme, emphasised that “Smallholder farmers remain the backbone of food supply systems in most low income and many middle income countries.”

Their “awareness of and access to agricultural technologies and techniques is often lacking”, he added, but that fact opens up a huge opportunity for sustainable growth in both food supply, and rural incomes:

“Training in production techniques and technologies that conserve soil and water, or that reduce waste and loss of crops, communications tools such as cellphones and videos and organizational innovations such as setting up market-oriented farmer based organisations, can lead toward more sustainable intensification while broadly increasing food security.”

The smart money is backing this new and more joined up farmer-focused approach, with big funders such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (also see here) and the Clinton Development Initiative ‘going local’ and backing strategies that help small actors do better.

Technologies for farmer empowerment

Among the approaches delivering results are those that improve storage and market access, thereby cutting food waste in the agricultural landscapes where food is grown.

Micro-finance and micro-insurance are proving vital facilities for many farmers in enabling them to make investments and to manage risk. Farmer empowerment via training is also increasingly seen as a vital plank for future food security.

Perhaps this shift of emphasis toward communications technologies and intensification based on farmer empowerment marks the opening of a new chapter in our multi-millennial efforts to ensure we have enough to eat.

It comes not a moment too soon. The days when technology could be thrown at the challenges linked with feeding ourselves and it assumed that the ecological damage was an acceptable price to pay for cheap food are over.

No longer is it feasible to trade one set of priorities at the expense of the others, for if nature doesn’t function neither will our food system. One vital strategy for navigating these tight straits is the empowerment of small scale farmers.

 

 

Tony Juniper is a campaigner, writer, sustainability advisor and leading British environmentalist. For more than 25 years he has worked for change toward a more sustainable society at local, national and international levels. His website is at tonyjuniper.com.

 

 




386927

New technologies can help poor farmers – just not the ones you’re thinking of Updated for 2026

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During recent years we’ve become used to hearing that the answer to looming food security challenges is technology. For example, more sophisticated pesticides, genetic modification and machinery to grow food at ever-greater scale.

It is an especially believable narrative because – broadly speaking – this what has delivered some level of food security to most people during the period of explosive population growth that started during the 20th century, and continues today.

But while marking a success at one level, there are serious downsides, not least seen in how modern farming is responsible for driving several worsening global ecological trends.

These include climate change caused by the build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; the progressive pollution of ecosystems (especially aquatic and marine ones) with excess nitrogen and phosphorous; and the loss of biological diversity, caused by both of the above and habitat loss, mostly driven by conversion of more natural ecosystems to farmland.

Agriculture is also responsible for depleting resources that are vital for its own future – not least soils and freshwater.

That we cannot go on like this is not in doubt. The question is, will more technology present solutions that will actually work? The answer to that is an emphatic ‘yes!’ – although perhaps not the kind of technology many generally associate with farming policy.

A glimpse as to what technologies might work better in producing more food while protecting the natural systems we depend upon was glimpsed this week at the Slow Life Foundation‘s Slow Life Symposium taking place in the Maldives.

Digital technologies supporting India’s farmers

Rikin Gandhi is Chief Executive of an organization called Digital Green, and he presented to Symposium participants some of the methods being successfully deployed by his organization in dramatically increasing yields among small-scale farmers.

His basic idea is to exploit a particular fact of life that is seen right across the world. It stems from where most farmers get most of their new ideas from: namely other farmers.

Government training and information schemes can make an impact, so can advice from agrochemical companies (albeit biased at times), but by far the most convincing source of new ideas is other farmers.

Working with this reality Digital Green set out to improve yields through helping farmers make videos that would be shown to other farmers nearby.

Using off-the-shelf equipment including pocket video cameras and pico projectors, Digital Green assists farmers to generate content for use among tribal communities living in remote areas without electricity. (see photo)

Battery powered video and projection enables best practice to be shared even among illiterate groups where the written word is near to useless. Gandhi got results with better farming methods adopted more quickly and more cost-effectively than earlier attempts to do the same.

Indeed, Digital Green has demonstrated that for every dollar spent, the system persuaded seven times as many farmers to adopt new ideas as an existing official program of training and visits.

Twice the rice, half the water

Another measure of success is how many farmers have been empowered through new knowledge to the point where they are producing twice as much rice with half as much water – thereby helping to address the twin emerging challenges of food and water security, while keeping people on the land (and out of the fast expanding cities) by increasing their incomes.

And when farmers have more knowledge about soil health and the role of composts as at least a partial alternative to commercial fertilisers then opportunities are presented to cut costs while reducing environmental impacts.

Other technologies can complement this basic means of sharing ideas, including mobile phones. Although most farmers are still not yet connected in this way, the proportion that are is growing fast, in turn offering the prospect to lever further value from existing agricultural resources in terms of people and land through, for example, sharing of information about market conditions and weather forecasts.

There is of course a cautionary note to strike, as Gandhi observes: “During the Green Revolution era it was all about agricultural technology being transferred to farmers. That did boost yields but had issues coming with it.

“The same thing can be said about information technology. This is powerful but also needs to be supported through partnerships and working with social organisations. We need to think about the context for the technology, and the people using it, not just the technology.”

The new ‘intensification’: producing more, from less

Alongside a flipping of the narrative relating to agricultural technology is a change in tone regarding the very concept of intensification. For decades that idea has been associated with ever more chemical inputs, with all the attendant consequences as seen for example in resource depletion and greenhouse gas emissions.

Those close to the emerging challenge of how best to achieve food security while maintaining ecological integrity see a new definition here too.

‘Intensification’ is now regarded as empowering farmers to use their ingenuity and local resources more effectively, rather than being based on strategies to import energy intensive inputs.

David Monsma, Executive Director at the Aspen Institute‘s Energy and Environment Programme, emphasised that “Smallholder farmers remain the backbone of food supply systems in most low income and many middle income countries.”

Their “awareness of and access to agricultural technologies and techniques is often lacking”, he added, but that fact opens up a huge opportunity for sustainable growth in both food supply, and rural incomes:

“Training in production techniques and technologies that conserve soil and water, or that reduce waste and loss of crops, communications tools such as cellphones and videos and organizational innovations such as setting up market-oriented farmer based organisations, can lead toward more sustainable intensification while broadly increasing food security.”

The smart money is backing this new and more joined up farmer-focused approach, with big funders such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (also see here) and the Clinton Development Initiative ‘going local’ and backing strategies that help small actors do better.

Technologies for farmer empowerment

Among the approaches delivering results are those that improve storage and market access, thereby cutting food waste in the agricultural landscapes where food is grown.

Micro-finance and micro-insurance are proving vital facilities for many farmers in enabling them to make investments and to manage risk. Farmer empowerment via training is also increasingly seen as a vital plank for future food security.

Perhaps this shift of emphasis toward communications technologies and intensification based on farmer empowerment marks the opening of a new chapter in our multi-millennial efforts to ensure we have enough to eat.

It comes not a moment too soon. The days when technology could be thrown at the challenges linked with feeding ourselves and it assumed that the ecological damage was an acceptable price to pay for cheap food are over.

No longer is it feasible to trade one set of priorities at the expense of the others, for if nature doesn’t function neither will our food system. One vital strategy for navigating these tight straits is the empowerment of small scale farmers.

 

 

Tony Juniper is a campaigner, writer, sustainability advisor and leading British environmentalist. For more than 25 years he has worked for change toward a more sustainable society at local, national and international levels. His website is at tonyjuniper.com.

 

 




386927

New technologies can help poor farmers – just not the ones you’re thinking of Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




During recent years we’ve become used to hearing that the answer to looming food security challenges is technology. For example, more sophisticated pesticides, genetic modification and machinery to grow food at ever-greater scale.

It is an especially believable narrative because – broadly speaking – this what has delivered some level of food security to most people during the period of explosive population growth that started during the 20th century, and continues today.

But while marking a success at one level, there are serious downsides, not least seen in how modern farming is responsible for driving several worsening global ecological trends.

These include climate change caused by the build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; the progressive pollution of ecosystems (especially aquatic and marine ones) with excess nitrogen and phosphorous; and the loss of biological diversity, caused by both of the above and habitat loss, mostly driven by conversion of more natural ecosystems to farmland.

Agriculture is also responsible for depleting resources that are vital for its own future – not least soils and freshwater.

That we cannot go on like this is not in doubt. The question is, will more technology present solutions that will actually work? The answer to that is an emphatic ‘yes!’ – although perhaps not the kind of technology many generally associate with farming policy.

A glimpse as to what technologies might work better in producing more food while protecting the natural systems we depend upon was glimpsed this week at the Slow Life Foundation‘s Slow Life Symposium taking place in the Maldives.

Digital technologies supporting India’s farmers

Rikin Gandhi is Chief Executive of an organization called Digital Green, and he presented to Symposium participants some of the methods being successfully deployed by his organization in dramatically increasing yields among small-scale farmers.

His basic idea is to exploit a particular fact of life that is seen right across the world. It stems from where most farmers get most of their new ideas from: namely other farmers.

Government training and information schemes can make an impact, so can advice from agrochemical companies (albeit biased at times), but by far the most convincing source of new ideas is other farmers.

Working with this reality Digital Green set out to improve yields through helping farmers make videos that would be shown to other farmers nearby.

Using off-the-shelf equipment including pocket video cameras and pico projectors, Digital Green assists farmers to generate content for use among tribal communities living in remote areas without electricity. (see photo)

Battery powered video and projection enables best practice to be shared even among illiterate groups where the written word is near to useless. Gandhi got results with better farming methods adopted more quickly and more cost-effectively than earlier attempts to do the same.

Indeed, Digital Green has demonstrated that for every dollar spent, the system persuaded seven times as many farmers to adopt new ideas as an existing official program of training and visits.

Twice the rice, half the water

Another measure of success is how many farmers have been empowered through new knowledge to the point where they are producing twice as much rice with half as much water – thereby helping to address the twin emerging challenges of food and water security, while keeping people on the land (and out of the fast expanding cities) by increasing their incomes.

And when farmers have more knowledge about soil health and the role of composts as at least a partial alternative to commercial fertilisers then opportunities are presented to cut costs while reducing environmental impacts.

Other technologies can complement this basic means of sharing ideas, including mobile phones. Although most farmers are still not yet connected in this way, the proportion that are is growing fast, in turn offering the prospect to lever further value from existing agricultural resources in terms of people and land through, for example, sharing of information about market conditions and weather forecasts.

There is of course a cautionary note to strike, as Gandhi observes: “During the Green Revolution era it was all about agricultural technology being transferred to farmers. That did boost yields but had issues coming with it.

“The same thing can be said about information technology. This is powerful but also needs to be supported through partnerships and working with social organisations. We need to think about the context for the technology, and the people using it, not just the technology.”

The new ‘intensification’: producing more, from less

Alongside a flipping of the narrative relating to agricultural technology is a change in tone regarding the very concept of intensification. For decades that idea has been associated with ever more chemical inputs, with all the attendant consequences as seen for example in resource depletion and greenhouse gas emissions.

Those close to the emerging challenge of how best to achieve food security while maintaining ecological integrity see a new definition here too.

‘Intensification’ is now regarded as empowering farmers to use their ingenuity and local resources more effectively, rather than being based on strategies to import energy intensive inputs.

David Monsma, Executive Director at the Aspen Institute‘s Energy and Environment Programme, emphasised that “Smallholder farmers remain the backbone of food supply systems in most low income and many middle income countries.”

Their “awareness of and access to agricultural technologies and techniques is often lacking”, he added, but that fact opens up a huge opportunity for sustainable growth in both food supply, and rural incomes:

“Training in production techniques and technologies that conserve soil and water, or that reduce waste and loss of crops, communications tools such as cellphones and videos and organizational innovations such as setting up market-oriented farmer based organisations, can lead toward more sustainable intensification while broadly increasing food security.”

The smart money is backing this new and more joined up farmer-focused approach, with big funders such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (also see here) and the Clinton Development Initiative ‘going local’ and backing strategies that help small actors do better.

Technologies for farmer empowerment

Among the approaches delivering results are those that improve storage and market access, thereby cutting food waste in the agricultural landscapes where food is grown.

Micro-finance and micro-insurance are proving vital facilities for many farmers in enabling them to make investments and to manage risk. Farmer empowerment via training is also increasingly seen as a vital plank for future food security.

Perhaps this shift of emphasis toward communications technologies and intensification based on farmer empowerment marks the opening of a new chapter in our multi-millennial efforts to ensure we have enough to eat.

It comes not a moment too soon. The days when technology could be thrown at the challenges linked with feeding ourselves and it assumed that the ecological damage was an acceptable price to pay for cheap food are over.

No longer is it feasible to trade one set of priorities at the expense of the others, for if nature doesn’t function neither will our food system. One vital strategy for navigating these tight straits is the empowerment of small scale farmers.

 

 

Tony Juniper is a campaigner, writer, sustainability advisor and leading British environmentalist. For more than 25 years he has worked for change toward a more sustainable society at local, national and international levels. His website is at tonyjuniper.com.

 

 




386927

Election debates: only the Greens offer a genuine alternative Updated for 2026

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A YouGov poll showing the Green Party has more support than the Liberal Democrats raises yet more questions as to why the party is being excluded from a planned series of debates ahead of next year’s election.

If the decision to exclude the party was questionable before, it is even more so now. The Greens are quickly gaining ground and deserve to be taken seriously.

But more importantly, bringing the party in will make this a real debate, not just a Q&A with four white men who can only be differentiated by the colour of their ties.

The BBC, ITV, Sky and Channel 4 will run three debates between party leaders next year and will allow UKIP leader Nigel Farage to take part in one of them. Green Party leader Natalie Bennett, however, will not be included in the line-up.

The party has threatened legal proceedings and a petition calling for Bennett to be given a place has been signed by nearly 200,000 people.

The BBC argues the Greens have neither the past or present support to justify giving Bennett a place on the debate stage in front of a national audience.

They note, however, that they “will continue to keep any new evidence of increased support for the Green party under close review”. This latest poll would appear to be just such a piece of evidence.

The Greens have become a genuine political force

Politically, the Greens of 2014 are not the Greens of 2010. They are making serious gains in public opinion that could translate into significant electoral victories.

Peter Kellner of YouGov has referred to the Party as a ‘wildcard’ shaking up the election. He suggests a “two-headed protest vote” is emerging, with UKIP and the Greens as the driving force. For this reason, alone, the Greens have a legitimate case to be allowed into the debate.

It is no longer possible to simply dismiss the Greens as a fringe party. They are building a broad coalition of support that is progressively situating them as a legitimate political force.

Even David Cameron, admittedly for his own strategic reasons, acknowledged this changing reality. He has acknowledged the absurdity of including UKIP but not the Greens in the debate when each has a sitting MP, stating: “I can’t see how you can have a party in that has an MP in parliament, but not another party.”

Just as importantly, Bennett’s inclusion would do much for adding a different kind of voice to these proceedings, especially as the other three leaders are all white males.

A true alternative to neo-liberal austerity

There is, though, a more fundamental reason for greening the debate. The Green Party offers a real ideological and policy alternative to the similarly pro-market and neo-conservative platforms of the other three major parties.

Bennett would provide a different political perspective to the pro-austerity, pro-war and anti-immigration agendas that are likely to be pushed by the others.

Indeed, this is a point that Bennett, herself, has continually made but that remains largely overlooked. In this spirit, she recently wrote:

“Policies such as bringing the railways back into public hands, saying that the profit motive has no place in healthcare, that the poor and disadvantaged must not be made to pay for the fraud and errors of the bankers with the failed policy of austerity have extremely high levels of support. Only the Green Party is supporting these policies.”

These concerns are even more pressing now the Labour Party can be seen echoing the positions advocated by the Tories and UKIP.

Ed Miliband has now placed Labour firmly in the anti-immigration camp, directly challenging Cameron on this issue. He publicly declared that dealing with immigration “is at the top of Labour’s agenda” promised that there would be a crackdown on immigrants within weeks of his party winning power.

Similarly, while UKIP is gaining popularity as the outsider party its economic policies are quite similar to those of the Conservatives – they are perhaps even more austerity-driven.

Behind its populist facade, UKIP wants to eliminate progressive taxation, dramatically reduce spending back to levels before New Labour’s 1997 victory and stimulate employment by lowering business taxes and loosening regulation.

We need a true debate of ideas – not just the usual ding-dong

Democratic change is more than just an incumbent losing. It is also using elections to transform a country’s values and policies. By including the Greens, these debates would come closer to the ideal of having a space for exchanging different ideas about the direction the UK should take.

Without Bennett, it is four leaders arguing almost identical points using different language. It would undoubtedly make for compelling television, but contain little substantial value.

Elections are usually won and lost on pragmatic decisions by voters about which candidate is the least bad and including the Greens in these TV debates would not change that.

But while it would have limited electoral effect, greening the debate would at least provide the forum for a more genuine contest of ideas concerning what is good for the UK in the 21st century and beyond.

 

 

Peter Bloom is Lecturer in Organization Studies, Department of People and Organisation at The Open University. He does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

 




386194

Ebola: don’t blame the bats! Updated for 2026

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In an era flush with vaccines and antibiotics, when the greatest health risks in the developed world ride on the back of fried fish and hamburgers, it is easy to forget that infectious diseases still account for a quarter of all human deaths worldwide.

Although this is a burden largely carried by more impoverished nations, the unfolding Ebola outbreak is a dramatic reminder that infectious diseases, and the dangers they pose, have no respect for country borders.

Making the leap from animal to human

One of the greatest global health threats lies in emerging diseases, which have never been seen before in humans or – as with Ebola – appear sporadically in new locations.

Most emerging diseases are zoonoses, meaning they are caused by pathogens that can jump from animals into people. Out of more than 300 emerging infections identified since 1940, over 60% are zoonotic, and of these, 72% originate in wildlife.

Whereas some zoonotic infections, such as rabies, cannot be transmitted between human patients, others can spread across populations and borders: in 2003, SARS, a coronavirus linked to bats, spread to several continents within a few weeks before it was eliminated, while HIV has become, over several decades, a persistent pandemic.

The unpredictable nature and novelty of zoonotic pathogens make them incredibly difficult to defend against and respond to. But that does not mean we are helpless in the face of emerging ones.

Because we know that the majority of zoonoses pass from wildlife, we can start to identify high-risk points for transmission by determining which wildlife species may pose the greatest risk.

Searching for suspects

Of all wildlife species, bats in particular pose complex questions. The second most diverse group of mammals after rodents, they host more than 65 known human pathogens, including Ebola virus, coronavirus (the cause of SARS), henipaviruses (which can cause deadly encephalitis in humans) and rabies.

But they are also one of the mammalian groups most vulnerable to overhunting and habitat destruction, while providing indispensable ecological functions such as pest control by bats that eat insects, pollination and seed dispersal.

Whether eating their body weights in insects every night, or dispersing seeds from fruit trees across large areas, bats provide services to local economies worth billions of dollars across the world.

The loss of bats, whether from hunting or for disease control almost certainly would have far-reaching and long-lasting ecological and economic consequences.

This much we know, and yet the details of how zoonoses spill over from bats into people are vastly understudied. Understanding how humans and bats interact had, until recently, never been examined in West Africa, and only peripherally probed elsewhere in the world.

Uncovering behaviour that brings humans into contact with bats and other wildlife, and exposes people to zoonoses, could provide invaluable clues for preventing zoonotic outbreaks.

To address these questions, we put together an international network of collaborators, led in the UK by the Zoological Society of London and the University of Cambridge.

From Malaysia to Ghana, from Australia to Peru, bats are coming into contact with humans more and more frequently as people are expanding into previously virgin territories.

Bats as bushmeat – they didn’t ask us to eat them!

Fruit bats are also often attracted to orchards and gardens planted on the edge of their territories. But another human behaviour contributes significantly to the risk of zoonotic spillover from all wildlife species: hunting.

The consumption of bushmeat, or wild animal meat, is a global phenomenon on a massive scale – estimates of the combined bushmeat consumption in Central Africa and the Amazon Basin exceed 1 billion kilograms annually.

In Ghana, where fruit bats have tested positive for antibodies to henipaviruses and Ebola virus, the status of bats as bushmeat was essentially unknown until we began our investigation five years ago.

In two recent studies carried out in Ghana, we reported how many people hunt bats for both food and money. We estimated that more than 100,000 fruit bats, specifically the straw coloured fruit bat, are harvested every year.

Bat meat likely provides an important secondary source of protein for the hunters and their families, especially when other sources such as fish or antelope are scarce. Bat meat also fetches a fairly high price at markets, supplementing a hunter’s often inconsistent income.

Some people also depend on bat meat, and other bushmeat, for both their survival and livelihoods. Bushmeat hunting often occurs in remote or impoverished places, where little infrastructure exists to support alternative livelihoods or even enforcement of hunting laws.

But hunters and those who prepare bat meat for sale or consumption also place themselves at risk of exposure to bat-borne zoonotic pathogens. Such pathogens can pass through blood, scratches, bites, and urine.

Bat hunters handle live, often wounded bats and freshly killed bats, putting them into direct contact with bat blood and at risk of being bitten and scratched. Despite this, hunters are largely unaware of the risks they run.

The risks of zoonoses can be managed – but never eliminated

Understanding what risks bats pose, as little as we know, is only the beginning of the challenge. Reducing the risk of zoonoses is not simple or easy, and certainly not a simple question of stopping hunting or culling reservoir hosts.

Reducing risk sustainably and equitably will therefore likely need a combination of interventions, encompassing developmental approaches to strengthen local economies, expand job opportunities, and increase the supply of safer alternative protein sources in order to reduce the need to hunt wildlife – together with education to promote safer hunting practices.

Communities may have to change how they use land, and limit bushmeat hunting and human expansion activities to minimise the risks of spillover. At the same time, we need advances in medical technology and surveillance systems to monitor and swiftly respond when outbreaks do occur.

Such interventions can be complex and costly, but are essential. While the 2014 Ebola outbreak is the biggest to date, there will almost certainly be many zoonotic disease outbreaks in the future.

By bringing together expertise from ecology, epidemiology and social sciences, and concentrating on long-term management of risks, we hope to help communities maintain a safe and mutually beneficial relationship with their natural environment.

 

 

Alexandra Kamins is Research Analyst at the Colorado Hospital Association, and co-author of the paper ‘Uncovering the fruit bat bushmeat commodity chain and the true extent of fruit bat hunting in Ghana, West Africa’, funded by the University of Cambridge and the Gates Foundation. She works as a reacher for the Colorado Hospital Association.

Marcus Rowcliffe is Research Fellow at Zoological Society of London, and co-author of the paper ‘Uncovering the fruit bat bushmeat commodity chain and the true extent of fruit bat hunting in Ghana, West Africa’, funded by the University of Cambridge and the Gates Foundation.

Olivier Restif is Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge. He receives funding from the Royal Society, the BBSRC and US Federal Agencies.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

 




385794

Climate ‘uncertainty’ is no excuse for climate inaction Updated for 2026

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Former environment minister Owen Paterson has called for the UK to scrap its climate change targets.

In a speech to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, he cited “considerable uncertainty” over the impact of carbon emissions on global warming – a line that was displayed prominently in coverage by the Telegraph and the Daily Mail.

Paterson is far from alone: climate change debate has been suffused with appeals to ‘uncertainty’ to delay policy action. Who hasn’t heard politicians or media personalities use uncertainty associated with some aspects of climate change to claim that the science is ‘not settled‘?

Over in the US, this sort of thinking pops up quite often in the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal. Its most recent article, by Professor Judith Curry, concludes that the ostensibly slowed rate of recent warming gives us “more time to find ways to decarbonise the economy affordably.”

What we do know – inspite of ‘uncertainty’

At first glance, avoiding interference with the global economy may seem advisable when there is uncertainty about the future rate of warming or the severity of its consequences.

But delaying action because the facts are presumed to be unreliable reflects a misunderstanding of the science of uncertainty.

Simply because a crucial parameter such as the climate system’s sensitivity to greenhouse gas emissions is expressed as a range – for example, that under some emissions scenarios we will experience 2.6°C to 4.8ºC of global warming or 0.3 to 1.7 m of sea level rise by 2100 – does not mean that the underlying science is poorly understood. We are very confident that temperatures and sea levels will rise by a considerable amount.

Perhaps more importantly, just because some aspects of climate change are difficult to predict (will your county experience more intense floods in a warmer world, or will the floods occur down the road?) does not negate our wider understanding of the climate.

We can’t yet predict the floods of the future but we do know that precipitation will be more intense because more water will be stored in the atmosphere on a warmer planet.

This idea of uncertainty might be embedded deeply within science but is no one’s friend and it should be minimised to the greatest extent possible. It is an impetus to mitigative action rather than a reason for complacency.

Uncertainty means more risk – not less

There are three key aspects of scientific uncertainty surrounding climate change projections that exacerbate rather than ameliorate the risks to our future.

First, uncertainty has an asymmetrical effect on many climatic quantities. For example, a quantity known as Earth system sensitivity, which tells us how much the planet warms for each doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, has been estimated to be between 1.5°C to 4.5ºC.

However, it is highly unlikely, given the well-established understanding of how carbon dioxide absorbs long-wave radiation, that this value can be below 1ºC. There is a possibility, however, that sensitivity could be higher than 4.5ºC.

For fundamental mathematical reasons, the uncertainty favours greater, rather than smaller, climate impacts than a simple range suggests.

Uncertainty also makes adaptation harder

Second, the uncertainty in our projections makes adaptation to climate change more expensive and challenging. Suppose we need to build flood defences for a coastal English town.

If we could forecast a 1m sea level rise by 2100 without any uncertainty, the town could confidently build flood barriers 1m higher than they are today. However, although sea levels are most likely to rise by about 1m, we’re really looking at a range between 0.3m and 1.7m.

Therefore, flood defences must be at least 1.7m higher than today – 70cm higher than they could be in the absence of uncertainty. And as uncertainty increases, so does the required height of flood defences for non-negotiable mathematical reasons.

And the problem doesn’t end there, as there is further uncertainty in forecasts of rainfall occurrence, intensity and storm surges. This could ultimately mandate a 2 to 3m-high flood defence to stay on the safe side, even if the most likely prediction is for only a 1m sea-level rise.

Even then, as most uncertainty ranges are for 95% confidence, there is a 5% chance that those walls would still be too low. Maybe a town is willing to accept a 5% chance of a breach, but a nuclear power station cannot to take such risks.

Systemic uncertainties may be hiding the gravest of risks

Finally, some global warming consequences are associated with deep, so-called systemic uncertainty. For example, the combined impact on coral reefs of warmer oceans, more acidic waters and coastal run-off that becomes more silt-choked from more intense rainfalls is very difficult to predict.

But we do know, from decades of study of complex systems, that those deep uncertainties may camouflage particularly grave risks. This is particularly concerning given that more than 2.6 billion people depend on the oceans as their primary source of protein.

Similarly, warming of Arctic permafrost could promote the growth of CO2-sequestering plants, the release of warming-accelerating methane, or both.

Warm worlds with very high levels of carbon dioxide did exist in the very distant past and these earlier worlds provide some insight into the response of the Earth system; however, we are accelerating into this new world at a rate that is unprecedented in Earth history, creating additional layers of complexity and uncertainty.

Uncertainty is not the same as ignorance

Increasingly, arguments against climate mitigation are phrased as “I accept that humans are increasing CO2 levels and that this will cause some warming but climate is so complicated we cannot understand what the impacts of that warming will be.”

This argument is incorrect – uncertainty does not imply ignorance. Indeed, whatever we don’t know mandates caution. No parent would argue:

“I accept that if my child kicks lions, this will irritate them, but a range of factors will dictate how the lions respond; therefore I will not stop my child from kicking lions.”

The deeper the uncertainty, the more greenhouse gas emissions should be perceived as a wild and poorly understood gamble.

By extension, the only unequivocal tool for minimising climate change uncertainty is to decrease our greenhouse gas emissions.

 

 

Richard Pancost is Professor of Biogeochemistry, Director of the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol. He receives funding from the NERC, the EU and the Leverhulme Trust.

Stephan Lewandowsky is Chair of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Bristol. He receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the World University Network, and the Royal Society.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

 




385583

Climate ‘uncertainty’ is no excuse for climate inaction Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




Former environment minister Owen Paterson has called for the UK to scrap its climate change targets.

In a speech to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, he cited “considerable uncertainty” over the impact of carbon emissions on global warming – a line that was displayed prominently in coverage by the Telegraph and the Daily Mail.

Paterson is far from alone: climate change debate has been suffused with appeals to ‘uncertainty’ to delay policy action. Who hasn’t heard politicians or media personalities use uncertainty associated with some aspects of climate change to claim that the science is ‘not settled‘?

Over in the US, this sort of thinking pops up quite often in the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal. Its most recent article, by Professor Judith Curry, concludes that the ostensibly slowed rate of recent warming gives us “more time to find ways to decarbonise the economy affordably.”

What we do know – inspite of ‘uncertainty’

At first glance, avoiding interference with the global economy may seem advisable when there is uncertainty about the future rate of warming or the severity of its consequences.

But delaying action because the facts are presumed to be unreliable reflects a misunderstanding of the science of uncertainty.

Simply because a crucial parameter such as the climate system’s sensitivity to greenhouse gas emissions is expressed as a range – for example, that under some emissions scenarios we will experience 2.6°C to 4.8ºC of global warming or 0.3 to 1.7 m of sea level rise by 2100 – does not mean that the underlying science is poorly understood. We are very confident that temperatures and sea levels will rise by a considerable amount.

Perhaps more importantly, just because some aspects of climate change are difficult to predict (will your county experience more intense floods in a warmer world, or will the floods occur down the road?) does not negate our wider understanding of the climate.

We can’t yet predict the floods of the future but we do know that precipitation will be more intense because more water will be stored in the atmosphere on a warmer planet.

This idea of uncertainty might be embedded deeply within science but is no one’s friend and it should be minimised to the greatest extent possible. It is an impetus to mitigative action rather than a reason for complacency.

Uncertainty means more risk – not less

There are three key aspects of scientific uncertainty surrounding climate change projections that exacerbate rather than ameliorate the risks to our future.

First, uncertainty has an asymmetrical effect on many climatic quantities. For example, a quantity known as Earth system sensitivity, which tells us how much the planet warms for each doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, has been estimated to be between 1.5°C to 4.5ºC.

However, it is highly unlikely, given the well-established understanding of how carbon dioxide absorbs long-wave radiation, that this value can be below 1ºC. There is a possibility, however, that sensitivity could be higher than 4.5ºC.

For fundamental mathematical reasons, the uncertainty favours greater, rather than smaller, climate impacts than a simple range suggests.

Uncertainty also makes adaptation harder

Second, the uncertainty in our projections makes adaptation to climate change more expensive and challenging. Suppose we need to build flood defences for a coastal English town.

If we could forecast a 1m sea level rise by 2100 without any uncertainty, the town could confidently build flood barriers 1m higher than they are today. However, although sea levels are most likely to rise by about 1m, we’re really looking at a range between 0.3m and 1.7m.

Therefore, flood defences must be at least 1.7m higher than today – 70cm higher than they could be in the absence of uncertainty. And as uncertainty increases, so does the required height of flood defences for non-negotiable mathematical reasons.

And the problem doesn’t end there, as there is further uncertainty in forecasts of rainfall occurrence, intensity and storm surges. This could ultimately mandate a 2 to 3m-high flood defence to stay on the safe side, even if the most likely prediction is for only a 1m sea-level rise.

Even then, as most uncertainty ranges are for 95% confidence, there is a 5% chance that those walls would still be too low. Maybe a town is willing to accept a 5% chance of a breach, but a nuclear power station cannot to take such risks.

Systemic uncertainties may be hiding the gravest of risks

Finally, some global warming consequences are associated with deep, so-called systemic uncertainty. For example, the combined impact on coral reefs of warmer oceans, more acidic waters and coastal run-off that becomes more silt-choked from more intense rainfalls is very difficult to predict.

But we do know, from decades of study of complex systems, that those deep uncertainties may camouflage particularly grave risks. This is particularly concerning given that more than 2.6 billion people depend on the oceans as their primary source of protein.

Similarly, warming of Arctic permafrost could promote the growth of CO2-sequestering plants, the release of warming-accelerating methane, or both.

Warm worlds with very high levels of carbon dioxide did exist in the very distant past and these earlier worlds provide some insight into the response of the Earth system; however, we are accelerating into this new world at a rate that is unprecedented in Earth history, creating additional layers of complexity and uncertainty.

Uncertainty is not the same as ignorance

Increasingly, arguments against climate mitigation are phrased as “I accept that humans are increasing CO2 levels and that this will cause some warming but climate is so complicated we cannot understand what the impacts of that warming will be.”

This argument is incorrect – uncertainty does not imply ignorance. Indeed, whatever we don’t know mandates caution. No parent would argue:

“I accept that if my child kicks lions, this will irritate them, but a range of factors will dictate how the lions respond; therefore I will not stop my child from kicking lions.”

The deeper the uncertainty, the more greenhouse gas emissions should be perceived as a wild and poorly understood gamble.

By extension, the only unequivocal tool for minimising climate change uncertainty is to decrease our greenhouse gas emissions.

 

 

Richard Pancost is Professor of Biogeochemistry, Director of the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol. He receives funding from the NERC, the EU and the Leverhulme Trust.

Stephan Lewandowsky is Chair of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Bristol. He receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the World University Network, and the Royal Society.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

 




385583

Climate ‘uncertainty’ is no excuse for climate inaction Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




Former environment minister Owen Paterson has called for the UK to scrap its climate change targets.

In a speech to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, he cited “considerable uncertainty” over the impact of carbon emissions on global warming – a line that was displayed prominently in coverage by the Telegraph and the Daily Mail.

Paterson is far from alone: climate change debate has been suffused with appeals to ‘uncertainty’ to delay policy action. Who hasn’t heard politicians or media personalities use uncertainty associated with some aspects of climate change to claim that the science is ‘not settled‘?

Over in the US, this sort of thinking pops up quite often in the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal. Its most recent article, by Professor Judith Curry, concludes that the ostensibly slowed rate of recent warming gives us “more time to find ways to decarbonise the economy affordably.”

What we do know – inspite of ‘uncertainty’

At first glance, avoiding interference with the global economy may seem advisable when there is uncertainty about the future rate of warming or the severity of its consequences.

But delaying action because the facts are presumed to be unreliable reflects a misunderstanding of the science of uncertainty.

Simply because a crucial parameter such as the climate system’s sensitivity to greenhouse gas emissions is expressed as a range – for example, that under some emissions scenarios we will experience 2.6°C to 4.8ºC of global warming or 0.3 to 1.7 m of sea level rise by 2100 – does not mean that the underlying science is poorly understood. We are very confident that temperatures and sea levels will rise by a considerable amount.

Perhaps more importantly, just because some aspects of climate change are difficult to predict (will your county experience more intense floods in a warmer world, or will the floods occur down the road?) does not negate our wider understanding of the climate.

We can’t yet predict the floods of the future but we do know that precipitation will be more intense because more water will be stored in the atmosphere on a warmer planet.

This idea of uncertainty might be embedded deeply within science but is no one’s friend and it should be minimised to the greatest extent possible. It is an impetus to mitigative action rather than a reason for complacency.

Uncertainty means more risk – not less

There are three key aspects of scientific uncertainty surrounding climate change projections that exacerbate rather than ameliorate the risks to our future.

First, uncertainty has an asymmetrical effect on many climatic quantities. For example, a quantity known as Earth system sensitivity, which tells us how much the planet warms for each doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, has been estimated to be between 1.5°C to 4.5ºC.

However, it is highly unlikely, given the well-established understanding of how carbon dioxide absorbs long-wave radiation, that this value can be below 1ºC. There is a possibility, however, that sensitivity could be higher than 4.5ºC.

For fundamental mathematical reasons, the uncertainty favours greater, rather than smaller, climate impacts than a simple range suggests.

Uncertainty also makes adaptation harder

Second, the uncertainty in our projections makes adaptation to climate change more expensive and challenging. Suppose we need to build flood defences for a coastal English town.

If we could forecast a 1m sea level rise by 2100 without any uncertainty, the town could confidently build flood barriers 1m higher than they are today. However, although sea levels are most likely to rise by about 1m, we’re really looking at a range between 0.3m and 1.7m.

Therefore, flood defences must be at least 1.7m higher than today – 70cm higher than they could be in the absence of uncertainty. And as uncertainty increases, so does the required height of flood defences for non-negotiable mathematical reasons.

And the problem doesn’t end there, as there is further uncertainty in forecasts of rainfall occurrence, intensity and storm surges. This could ultimately mandate a 2 to 3m-high flood defence to stay on the safe side, even if the most likely prediction is for only a 1m sea-level rise.

Even then, as most uncertainty ranges are for 95% confidence, there is a 5% chance that those walls would still be too low. Maybe a town is willing to accept a 5% chance of a breach, but a nuclear power station cannot to take such risks.

Systemic uncertainties may be hiding the gravest of risks

Finally, some global warming consequences are associated with deep, so-called systemic uncertainty. For example, the combined impact on coral reefs of warmer oceans, more acidic waters and coastal run-off that becomes more silt-choked from more intense rainfalls is very difficult to predict.

But we do know, from decades of study of complex systems, that those deep uncertainties may camouflage particularly grave risks. This is particularly concerning given that more than 2.6 billion people depend on the oceans as their primary source of protein.

Similarly, warming of Arctic permafrost could promote the growth of CO2-sequestering plants, the release of warming-accelerating methane, or both.

Warm worlds with very high levels of carbon dioxide did exist in the very distant past and these earlier worlds provide some insight into the response of the Earth system; however, we are accelerating into this new world at a rate that is unprecedented in Earth history, creating additional layers of complexity and uncertainty.

Uncertainty is not the same as ignorance

Increasingly, arguments against climate mitigation are phrased as “I accept that humans are increasing CO2 levels and that this will cause some warming but climate is so complicated we cannot understand what the impacts of that warming will be.”

This argument is incorrect – uncertainty does not imply ignorance. Indeed, whatever we don’t know mandates caution. No parent would argue:

“I accept that if my child kicks lions, this will irritate them, but a range of factors will dictate how the lions respond; therefore I will not stop my child from kicking lions.”

The deeper the uncertainty, the more greenhouse gas emissions should be perceived as a wild and poorly understood gamble.

By extension, the only unequivocal tool for minimising climate change uncertainty is to decrease our greenhouse gas emissions.

 

 

Richard Pancost is Professor of Biogeochemistry, Director of the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol. He receives funding from the NERC, the EU and the Leverhulme Trust.

Stephan Lewandowsky is Chair of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Bristol. He receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the World University Network, and the Royal Society.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

 




385583