scholarly journals Methane and climate change

2002 ◽  
pp. 153-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.J. Ulyatt ◽  
H. Clark ◽  
D.K.R. Lassey
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Agricultural Sector ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Feed Additives ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Methane Mitigation ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Composition Modification ◽  
Methane Reduction

The New Zealand government has indicated that it will ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which means that legally binding targets will be set for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In "preferred" policies to achieve these targets, the agricultural sector will not be taxed directly but is expected to contribute to research leading to methane mitigation. A wide range of possibilities other than reducing livestock numbers exist for lowering livestock methane emissions: increasing the efficiency of animal production, exploiting betweenanimal variation; anti-methanogenic feed additives; dietary manipulation, including pasture composition modification; immunisation; and, manipulation of the rumen microbial ecosystem. Reduction in methane will not only have global environmental benefits, but also, as methane represents a loss of about 6% of an animal's energy intake, any reduction should be reflected in increased animal productivity per unit of intake. It should be possible to deliver a win/win situation with respect to methane reduction and increased productivity. Keywords: climate change, inventory, methane, mitigation, ruminants

scholarly journals The Evolution of NEPA in the Fight Against Climate Change

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Reiley
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Forest Management ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Environmental Policy Act ◽  
Outer Continental Shelf ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
National Environmental

The National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) is the first environmental charter of the United States. 1 Signed into law on January 1, 1970, NEPA addresses the need for overarching national environmental guidance in the country. During the course of its forty year history, NEPA has been used to challenge a wide range of federal actions including the issuance of operating permits under the Clean Air Act,2 the approval of forest management plans approved under the National Forest Management Act,3 the construction of highways under the Federal-Aid Highways Act,4 and the issuance of oil leases under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.5 Given the breadth of NEPA’s applicability, it was inevitable that NEPA would become a tool to combat climate change. The use of NEPA to require federal agencies to take a “hard look” at greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions makes perfect sense because many federal actions directly or indirectly contribute to GHG emissions. Since 1990, in City of Los Angeles v. NHTSA,6 plaintiffs have used NEPA, successfully and unsuccessfully, to challenge federal actions that might have an impact on the global climate.

Food safety and methods to ensure food security in the face of climate change.

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (15) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Jyoti Tripathi ◽  
◽  
Prasad S. Variyar ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Food Security ◽  
Food Safety ◽  
Insect Pests ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Global Food

Serious social, economic, and ecological consequences of climate change due to the high levels of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in our atmosphere resulting from a wide range of human activities including the burning of fossil fuels and land use have impacted weather events world over. Extreme weather events and warmer global temperatures are likely to be more frequent with an adverse overall effect on agricultural production unless there is an urgent reduction in GHG emissions. There is thus an immediate need for increasing adaptive capacity in agriculture to long-term climatic trends and increasing variability in weather patterns. Climate change also poses significant challenges to global food safety due to the emergence of new pathogens, insect pests, and toxicants. Food safety threats cause an enormous burden on economies due to disruptions or restrictions in global and regional agrifood trade, food loss, and associated income. Food safety thus plays a critical role across the four pillars of food security—availability, access, utilization, and stability. Climate change is likely to create new safety issues entailing reassessing our tolerance to risk and safety limits presently established for the human food chain. The present review focuses on the factors affecting food security and safety as a consequence of climate change and the pre- and postharvest strategies that need to be adopted to mitigate these effects for enhancing food safety and global food sufficiency in future.

Impact of renewable energy deployment on climate change in Nigeria

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 125-134
Author(s):  
Udochukwu B. Akuru ◽  
Ogbonnaya I. Okoro ◽  
Edward Chikuni
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Renewable Energy ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Environmental Effects ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Energy Sources ◽  
Industrial Growth ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

It is well known fact that the rate of industrial growth of any country is a function of the amount of energy available in that country and the extent to which this energy is utilized. The burning of fossil fuels to generate energy is a dirty process. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions result when fossil fuels are produced and consumed and these emissions contribute to climate change. Nigeria as a country is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change because its economy is mainly dependent on income generated from the production, processing, export and/or consumption of fossil fuels and its associated energy-intensive products. Hence, it is on this premise that this paper is researched to review the energy sources being used in Nigeria and investigate its impact to climate change. Findings reveal Nigeria’s over-dependence on fossil-generated energy with associated adverse environmental effects, among other things. Recommendations for the integration of renewable energy into Nigeria’s energy mix, beyond other measures, have been offered, especially with reference to the salient environmental benefits that accrue to it.

scholarly journals Local climate change cultures: climate-relevant discursive practices in three emerging economies

2019 ◽  
Vol 163 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Nash ◽  
Lorraine Whitmarsh ◽  
Stuart Capstick ◽  
Valdiney Gouveia ◽  
Rafaella de Carvalho Rodrigues Araújo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Emerging Economies ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Environmental Problems ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Local Climate ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Local Climate Change

AbstractIn recent decades, greater acknowledgement has been given to climate change as a cultural phenomenon. This paper takes a cultural lens to the topic of climate change, in which climate-relevant understandings are grounded in wider cultural, political and material contexts. We approach climate-relevant accounts at the level of the everyday, understood as a theoretically problematic and politically contested space This is in contrast to simply being the backdrop to mundane, repetitive actions contributing to environmental degradation and the site of mitigative actions. Taking discourse as a form of practice in which fragments of cultural knowledge are drawn on to construct our environmental problems, we investigate citizens’ accounts of climate-relevant issues in three culturally diverse emerging economies: Brazil, South Africa and China. These settings are important because greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are predicted to significantly increase in these countries in the future. We conducted semi-structured interviews with a range of citizens in each country using a narrative approach to contextualise climate-relevant issues as part of people’s lifestyle narratives. Participants overwhelmingly framed their accounts in the context of locally-salient issues, and few accounts explicitly referred to the phenomenon of climate change. Instead, elements of climate changes were conflated with other environmental issues and related to a wide range of cultural assumptions that influenced understandings and implied particular ways of responding to environmental problems. We conclude that climate change scholars should address locally relevant understandings and develop dialogues that can wider meanings that construct climate-relevant issues in vernacular ways at the local level.

scholarly journals The actions of the Brazilian agricultural sector in the context of climate change negotiations

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 28-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renato de Aragão Ribeiro Rodrigues ◽  
Marcela Cardoso Guilles Conceição ◽  
Edison Dausacker Bidone ◽  
Eduardo Silva Matos ◽  
Renato Campello Cordeiro ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Agricultural Sector ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Agricultural Practices ◽  
International Negotiation ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Personal View ◽  
Sustainable Rural Development ◽  
Climate Change Negotiations ◽  
Sustainable Technologies

Brazil has always maintained a prominent position in negotiations within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, playing a major role in setting increasingly ambitious goals and encouraging consensus among Parties. With the purpose of reducing GHG emissions from the agricultural sector and disseminating and financing good agricultural practices, Brazil developed a platform of sustainable technologies and public policies, as the Low Carbon Agriculture Plan (the “ABC Plan”). This article reviews the main milestones of Brazil’s role in the international negotiation on climate change, how these factors affected the Brazilian agricultural sector between 2009 and 2018 and the authors’ personal view on this context. The objective is to provide an overview of Brazil’s actions regarding the agricultural sector which contribute to the voluntary commitment assumed by the Brazilian government at COPs 15 and 21 and to provide a critical analysis of how these actions are being implemented. The main results show that low carbon agriculture has been consolidated as the main Brazilian strategy for sustainable rural development,but it is vital for our country to continue with these actions.

scholarly journals Evaluation of Low-Carbon Sustainable Technologies in Agriculture Sector through Grey Ordinal Priority Approach

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-26
Author(s):  
Shajedul Islam
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Agricultural Sector ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Agricultural Technologies ◽  
Global Food Security ◽  
Sustainable Technologies ◽  
Agriculture Sector

The agriculture sector plays a vital role in the economy, society, and environment, the three dimensions of sustainability. The agriculture sector contributes 12% to 14% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to the atmosphere, negatively impacting climate change. Using low-carbon and sustainable agricultural technologies can help mitigate climate change and global food security issues. But selecting and prioritizing the best technologies among all alternatives has always been an issue for decision-makers because of various uncertainty related to the agricultural sector. Therefore, the current study intends to identify and prioritize the key low-carbon and sustainable agricultural technologies. The current study makes a pioneering attempt in employing the Grey Ordinal Priority Approach (OPA-G), a modern multi-attribute decision-making technique, for the evaluation of low-carbon and sustainable technologies for the agricultural sector.  

Food safety and methods to ensure food security in the face of climate change.

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (015) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jyoti Tripathi
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Food Security ◽  
Food Safety ◽  
Insect Pests ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Extreme Weather Events ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Global Food

Abstract Serious social, economic, and ecological consequences of climate change due to the high levels of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in our atmosphere resulting from a wide range of human activities including the burning of fossil fuels and land use have impacted weather events world over. Extreme weather events and warmer global temperatures are likely to be more frequent with an adverse overall effect on agricultural production unless there is an urgent reduction in GHG emissions. There is thus an immediate need for increasing adaptive capacity in agriculture to long-term climatic trends and increasing variability in weather patterns. Climate change also poses significant challenges to global food safety due to the emergence of new pathogens, insect pests, and toxicants. Food safety threats cause an enormous burden on economies due to disruptions or restrictions in global and regional agrifood trade, food loss, and associated income. Food safety thus plays a critical role across the four pillars of food security-availability, access, utilization, and stability. Climate change is likely to create new safety issues entailing reassessing our tolerance to risk and safety limits presently established for the human food chain. The present review focuses on the factors affecting food security and safety as a consequence of climate change and the pre- and postharvest strategies that need to be adopted to mitigate these effects for enhancing food safety and global food sufficiency in future.

Consideration of food wastage along the supply chain in lifecycle assessments: A mini-review based on the case of tomatoes

2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Karin Bernstad ◽  
Alba Cánovas ◽  
Rogerio Valle
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Supply Chain ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Food Supply Chain ◽  
Total Contribution ◽  
Lca Case Studies ◽  
Food Wastage

In recent years, increased light has been shed on the large amounts of food wasted along the food supply chain (FSC). As lifecycle assessments (LCAs) are commonly used for estimations of environmental impacts from food production, it is relevant to investigate and discuss how such wastage is reflected in foodstuff LCAs. The objective of the present paper is to review a larger set of LCAs of foodstuff in order to (1) investigate if and how wastage along the FSC is addressed and (2) explore the importance of including wastage accumulated along the FSC in terms of environmental impacts. Twenty-eight LCA case studies and two review papers, focusing on tomatoes, were reviewed and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions chosen as indicator for the second objective. Only one third of the studies consider wastage at some part of the supply chain, in many cases in an inconsistent manner, and only in nine cases were GHG emissions from wastage included in overall systems GHG emissions. In these, wastage accounts for between 2 and 33% of total contribution to climate change. Omitting wastage when conducting LCA of foodstuff could result in underestimations of environmental impacts. Occurrence of wastage along all phases of the supply chain should be acknowledged in order to estimate environmental benefits from prevention and to identify areas where strategies with the aim of reducing wastage could be most efficient.

Investigating the cost-efficiency of rewetting German organic soils

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Steinhauser
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Data ◽  
Cost Efficiency ◽  
Agricultural Sector ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Commodity Prices ◽  
Organic Soil ◽  
Soil Restoration ◽  
Organic Soils ◽  
Emission Reductions ◽  
Wide Range

<p>Degraded organic soils are the largest source of atmospheric CO2 outside the energy sector, responsible for five percent of Germany’s total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Previous studies have shown a high potential of both protecting non-degraded soils and rewetting degraded soils for mitigating GHG emissions. However, these emission assessments provide little information about opportunity cost and regional cost-efficiency.</p><p>This study maps local emission benefits and management cost of organic soil restoration in Germany using a county-scale resolution (EU NUTS level 3/LAU level 1). We integrate these data in a recursive dynamic European agricultural sector model. This model determines the global agricultural market equilibrium for major agricultural commodities. In the European Union, the model depicts several intensities of crop and livestock production. To compute national abatement cost functions for rewetting organic soils in Germany, we solve the model for a wide range of alternative carbon prices applied to emission reductions from organic soils. From the optimal solution, we determine total emission reductions from organic soils in Germany accompanied by adjustments in agricultural production, land values, commodity prices, and international commodity trade.</p><p>The resulting spatial data will define economically attractive soil areas in Germany for agricultural mitigation efforts and for future in-depth case studies and stakeholder discussions. Thus, the results will guide optimal strategies for organic soil restoration.</p>

Tougher times for New Zealand farmers are ahead

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Agricultural Sector ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Government Support ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Financial Pressure ◽  
Forestry Sector ◽  
Change Response ◽  
The Impact

Subject The impact on New Zealand's farmers of changing environmental policies. Significance The Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill has now been signed into law, having been passed with the support of 119 out of 120 lawmakers on November 7. The law will see successive governments legally obliged to reduce New Zealand’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and implement policies for adapting to or mitigating climate change. The legislation is also the latest in a raft of environmental policy changes that will significantly affect the agricultural sector, a key income earner for New Zealand. Impacts Meeting costly new Green standards could put highly indebted dairy farmers under financial pressure, despite government support funding. Changes to rules on banks' capital could see them restricting further their lending to the relatively high-risk dairy sector. Government incentives will see more foreign and local investment in New Zealand’s forestry sector.

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