Dear Friend,
The world’s tropical forests are no longer carbon sinks because of human activity, and these forests now emit more carbon than these are able to absorb from the atmosphere as a result of the dual effects of deforestation and land degradation, finds a new study. The study tracking 300,000 trees over a period of 30 years finds: The ability of the world’s tropical forests to remove carbon from the atmosphere is decreasing.
If you think the contents of this news letter are critical for the dignified living and survival of humanity and other species on earth, please forward it to your friends and spread the word. It's time for humanity to come together as one family! You can subscribe to our news letter here http://www.countercurrents.org/news-letter/.
In Solidarity
Binu Mathew
Editor
Countercurrents.org
Tropical forests are now carbon source, not carbon sinks
by Countercurrents Collective
The world’s tropical forests are no longer carbon sinks because of human activity, and these forests now emit more carbon than these are able to absorb from the atmosphere as a result of the dual effects of deforestation and land degradation, finds a new study. The study tracking 300,000 trees over a period of 30 years finds: The ability of the world’s tropical forests to remove carbon from the atmosphere is decreasing.
The world’s tropical forests are no longer carbon sinks because of human activity, and these forests now emit more carbon than these are able to absorb from the atmosphere as a result of the dual effects of deforestation and land degradation, finds a new study.
The study tracking 300,000 trees over a period of 30 years finds: The ability of the world’s tropical forests to remove carbon from the atmosphere is decreasing.
The research report – “Asynchronous carbon sink saturation in African and Amazonian tropical forests” – published in research journal Nature on March 4, 2020, (Hubau, W., Lewis, S.L., Phillips, O.L. et al. Asynchronous carbon sink saturation in African and Amazonian tropical forests. Nature 579, 80–87, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2035-0) challenges the decades-long consensus that tropical forests are a moderate carbon sinks by storing more carbon than they emit due to natural processes and human activity.
The international scientific collaboration, led by the University of Leeds, reveals that a feared switch of the world’s undisturbed tropical forests from a carbon sink to a carbon source has begun.
Tropical forests are capable of storing large amounts of carbon. This is because trees absorb carbon from the atmosphere during photosynthesis and then use it to build new leaves, shoots and roots. But forests can also release carbon into the atmosphere. Some of this release is through natural processes such as plant respiration, droughts and wildfires. Emissions can increase further by human activities, such as deforestation and illegal logging.
The scientists assessed trends in the carbon sink using 244 structurally intact African tropical forests spanning 11 countries, compare them with 321 published plots from Amazonia and investigate the underlying drivers of the trends.
The study report said:
Structurally intact tropical forests sequestered about half of the global terrestrial carbon uptake over the 1990s and early 2000s, removing about 15 per cent of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. Climate-driven vegetation models typically predict that this tropical forest “carbon sink” will continue for decades.
The carbon sink in live aboveground biomass in intact African tropical forests has been stable for the three decades to 2015, at 0.66 tonnes of carbon per hectare per year (95 per cent confidence interval 0.53–0.79), in contrast to the long-term decline in Amazonian forests.
Therefore, the carbon sink responses of Earth’s two largest expanses of tropical forest have diverged. The difference is largely driven by carbon losses from tree mortality, with no detectable multi-decadal trend in Africa and a long-term increase in Amazonia. Both continents show increasing tree growth, consistent with the expected net effect of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide and air temperature. Despite the past stability of the African carbon sink, our most intensively monitored plots suggest a post-2010 increase in carbon losses, delayed compared to Amazonia, indicating asynchronous carbon sink saturation on the two continents. A statistical model including carbon dioxide, temperature, drought and forest dynamics accounts for the observed trends and indicates a long-term future decline in the African sink, whereas the Amazonian sink continues to weaken rapidly. Overall, the uptake of carbon into Earth’s intact tropical forests peaked in the 1990s. Given that the global terrestrial carbon sink is increasing in size, independent observations indicating greater recent carbon uptake into the Northern Hemisphere landmass reinforce our conclusion that the intact tropical forest carbon sink has already peaked. This saturation and ongoing decline of the tropical forest carbon sink has consequences for policies intended to stabilize Earth’s climate.
Intact tropical forests are well-known as a crucial global carbon sink, slowing climate change by removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in trees, a process known as carbon sequestration. Climate models typically predict that this tropical forest carbon sink will continue for decades.
However, the new analysis of three decades of tree growth and death from 565 undisturbed tropical forests across Africa and the Amazon has found that the overall uptake of carbon into Earth’s intact tropical forests peaked in the 1990s.
By the 2010s, on average, the ability of a tropical forest to absorb carbon had dropped by one-third. The switch is largely driven by carbon losses from trees dying.
The study by almost 100 institutions provides the first large-scale evidence that carbon uptake by the world’s tropical forests has already started a worrying downward trend.
Study lead author Dr Wannes Hubau, a former post-doctoral researcher at the University of Leeds now based at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium, said: “We show that peak carbon uptake into intact tropical forests occurred in the 1990s.
“By combining data from Africa and the Amazon we began to understand why these forests are changing, with carbon dioxide levels, temperature, drought, and forest dynamics being key.”
“Extra carbon dioxide boosts tree growth, but every year this effect is being increasingly countered by the negative impacts of higher temperatures and droughts which slow growth and can kill trees.
“Our modeling of these factors shows a long-term future decline in the African sink and that the Amazonian sink will continue to rapidly weaken, which we predict to become a carbon source in the mid-2030s.”
In the 1990s, intact tropical forests removed roughly 46 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, declining to an estimated 25 billion tonnes in the 2010s.
The lost sink capacity in the 2010s compared to the 1990s is 21 billion tonnes carbon dioxide, equivalent to a decade of fossil fuel emissions from the UK, Germany, France and Canada combined.
Overall, intact tropical forests removed 17% of human-made carbon dioxide emissions in the 1990s, reduced to just 6% in the 2010s.
This decline is because these forests were less able to absorb carbon by 33% and the area of intact forest declined by 19%, while global carbon dioxide emissions soared by 46%.
In the 2000s, intact tropical forest sequestered 36 billion tonnes carbon dioxide, equivalent to 9% of human-made carbon dioxide emissions.
“After years of work deep in the Congo and Amazon rainforests, we’ve found that one of the most worrying impacts of climate change has already begun. This is decades ahead of even the most pessimistic climate models,” said Simon Lewis.
“There is no time to lose in terms of tackling climate change,” he said.
The findings represent the collaborative effort of roughly 100 institutions in which researchers tracked some 300,000 trees spanning 565 patches of undisturbed tropical forests across Africa and the Amazon over a 30-year period.
Researchers used measurements of tree growth and death, along with CO2 emissions, rainfall, and temperatures, to estimate carbon storage or “sequestration.”
“We show that peak carbon uptake into intact tropical forests occurred in the 1990s,” said another lead author Wannes Hubau of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium.
At that time, the forests were able to store 46 billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere, representing about 17% of human-made carbon dioxide emissions.
Fast forward to the 2010s, and the researchers found the amount dropped to an estimated 25 billion tonnes, on par with roughly 6% of human-made carbon dioxide emissions.
Over the 30 years, the area of intact forest shrunk by 19% but global carbon dioxide emissions soared by 46%, the researchers noted.
The downward trend of carbon absorption didn’t happen in the zones at the same time, the study also found. The downward trend of sequestration hit the Amazon in the mid-1990s and the African forests about 15 years later.
The potential for the Amazon forests to switch from carbon sink to carbon source is not far off, with the study predicting it could happen as soon as the mid-2030s.
Hubau, in his statement, stressed need for ongoing monitoring “as our planet’s last great tropical forests are threatened as never before.”
For the moment, at least, humanity should still consider tropical forests carbon sponges. But, if urgent and bold measures aren’t taken soon, that could well change.
“Intact tropical forests remain a vital carbon sink but this research reveals that unless policies are put in place to stabilize Earth’s climate it is only a matter of time until they are no longer able to sequester carbon,” said Lewis, pointing to the possibility of a feedback loop being triggered.
“One big concern for the future of humanity is when carbon-cycle feedbacks really kick in, with nature switching from slowing climate change to accelerating,” Lewis said.
“By driving carbon dioxide emissions to net-zero even faster than currently envisaged, it would be possible to avoid intact tropical forests becoming a large source of carbon to the atmosphere. But that window of possibility is closing fast,” said Lewis.
Professor Douglas Sheil at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, a contributing researcher to the study, put the findings in stark terms.
“Our results are alarming,” he said. “The word ‘alarming’ should not be used lightly,” continued Sheil, “but in this case it fits.”
An earlier study (Baccini et al., 2017, “Tropical forests are a net carbon source based on aboveground measurements of gain and loss”, Science, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2017/09/27/science.aam5962) found that the world’s tropical forests gained 436m tonnes of carbon from 2003 to 2014. This was largely due to the recovery of previously disturbed forests, the scientists conducting the research said.
The tropical forests experienced a carbon loss of 861m tonnes of carbon over the same period.
This means that tropical forests experienced a net carbon loss of 425m tonnes of carbon over the study period – from 2003 to 2014. This figure is considerably higher than previous estimates of carbon loss from tropical forests.
The scientists collected carbon density measurements from forests across the tropics and used these to create a statistical model. The model then used to simulate fine-scale changes in carbon gain and loss in tropical forests over the course of 12 years.
The research findings suggest that curbing deforestation and protecting existing forests could be instrumental in removing greenhouse gases (GHG) from the atmosphere and fighting future climate change, he adds.
Calculating the balance between the uptake and release of carbon allows scientists to determine whether tropical forests are a “carbon sink”, meaning they take in more carbon than they release, or a “carbon source”, meaning their carbon emissions exceed their intake.
A recent rise in human activity in the world’s forested regions could have disrupted the balance between uptake and emissions, says Dr Alessandro Baccini, a researcher at the Woods Hole Research Centre in Massachusetts and lead author of the earlier study published in Science.
He said: “The main discovery is that forests in tropical regions are not a carbon sink, but a carbon source. That means that the amount of carbon emissions from tropical regions are actually bigger than the carbon removal that this region is able to achieve.”
The results find that the largest carbon losses took place in forests in Latin America, while the largest gains were made in Africa.
This pattern is largely driven by local levels of deforestation and land degradation, Baccini explained: “What we see is Latin America, especially Brazil, is a region that is giving off the largest amount of emissions. That is in part because the size of its forests but there is also a lot of disturbance and deforestation for cattle rearing going on. What we find in Africa there is a much smaller amount of disturbance and this is mainly driven by mining and deforestation for palm oil. In Asia, we see a lot of deforestation for palm oil.”
Calculating carbon loss
Traditionally, studies of carbon loss in tropical forests have relied on data taken from satellite images of tree cover.
This approach allows scientists to see the extent of deforestation in tropical regions, but it can overlook more subtle types of human activity, such as illegal logging, forest disturbance and land degradation.
Baccini said: “Degradation is a process where only a small portion of trees are removed from a forest. From a satellite image, the area will still look like an intact forest. But, when you lose even a small proportion trees, you lose a significant amount of carbon.”
Because of this caveat, the researchers opted instead to look for changes in “carbon density” from tropical forests spanning America, Africa and Asia.
Baccini said: “Carbon density is a measure of the weight of carbon that is held by forests. Even in the field we don’t really collect direct measurements of weight but we can collect direct measurements of the trees, such as their diameter and height, and then you use an equation to convert that into biomass.”
The figures found were considerably higher than that of previous estimates of carbon loss from tropical forests. This could be because previous research underestimated the impact of land degradation on carbon loss, said Baccini.
The research found that land degradation and disturbance accounts of 69% of total carbon losses from tropical forests.
Baccini explained: “We discovered that land degradation has a very significant effect on carbon loss. The carbon loss from land degradation is small but, because it happens a lot over a very large area, then it adds up to a lot of loss. We like to think that this is the first study where we can provide an estimate of the losses due to degradation over such a large area as the entire tropics.”
Although the world’s tropical forests are currently considered to be a carbon source, there are a number of steps that could be taken to turn them back into a carbon sink.
On this issue, Baccini said: “There is a possibility that by restoring the forest, by reducing, decreasing or stopping deforestation, by reforestation projects, we could actually make it into a sink. And it would be a pretty big sink.”
Restoring the ability of forests to remove carbon from the atmosphere could help us tackle climate change, he adds.
Baccini said: “Reforestation and afforestation could improve the quality of the planet through the conservation of biodiversity and an improvement in water quality and water resources, and all of this while we are reducing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. It’s a win-win-win possibility.”
Eastern Mediterranean: A microcosm of regional and global battles
by Dr James M Dorsey
https://countercurrents.org/2020/03/eastern-mediterranean-a-microcosm-of-regional-and-global-battles
The Eastern Mediterranean has become a flash-point for the meshing of geopolitics, the struggle for regional hegemony, battles for control of resources, religious soft power rivalry, and blatant interference in the politics of others.
The Eastern Mediterranean has become a flash-point for the meshing of geopolitics, the struggle for regional hegemony, battles for control of resources, religious soft power rivalry, and blatant interference in the politics of others.
The complex and dangerous juxtaposition of multiple conflicting interests broadens the focus beyond Russia, when it comes to meddling in elections, to include countries like Turkey, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. It blurs the lines between multiple conflicts such as the wars in Syria and Libya and the struggle for control of the Eastern Mediterranean’s newly found gas deposits. And it positions contested waters as the latest venue in which Russia and the West battle for influence.
Laying bare the multiple disputes being fought on the back of the Eastern Mediterranean with its natural gas reserves of 122 trillion cubic feet resembles peeling an onion.
Lining up on opposing sides are Middle Eastern, North African, and Eastern Mediterranean nations, Gulf states, Turkey, Russia, and Europe.
Perhaps, most fundamental is the degree to which Europe going forward will be able to reduce its dependence on Russian gas imports. Russia currently satisfies approximately 40 percent of the European Union’s gas needs.
The ability to reduce Russian imports with gas from the Eastern Mediterranean potentially would allow Europe to adopt a more forceful stand in the struggle between Western liberalism and Russian civilisationalism that is likely to shape a new world order.
EU dependence has so far prompted European nations to temper their defense of Western values against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s civilizationalist* policies that include territory grabs in the Caucasus and Ukraine, intimidation of Central Asian nations, and support for Western far-right, neo-Nazi, and anti-immigration forces designed to weaken liberal democracy and strengthen groups more empathetic to the Russian leader’s worldview.
“The bad news is that the Moscow-Washington confrontation will continue; the good news is that there will be some guardrails built around it. . . .The Eastern Mediterranean, however, is emerging as an area where Russia, again, is competing with the West,” said Dmitri Trenin, head of the Carnegie Moscow Center.
Mr. Trenin argued that it was the Eastern Mediterranean rather than Ukraine, Crimea, the Baltics, the Arctic, or south-eastern Europe where tension could flare the most.
If for some nations like Greece, Cyprus, and Lebanon the struggle to control the Eastern Mediterranean’s resources is primarily about economics, for others, including Egypt and Israel it’s about projecting power. That is no truer than for Russia and Turkey, even if their interests against the backdrop of recently diverging positions on the battlefields of Libya and Syria, may differ rather than converge.
Turkey raised the stakes with its military backing of Libya’s internationally recognized Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) against United Arab Emirates, Saudi, Egyptian, and Russian-backed rebel leader Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA).
A GNA-Turkish maritime agreement that created an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the Eastern Mediterranean favoring expansive Turkish claims and the building of relations between Khalifa Haftar and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad link the war in Syria to the Eastern Mediterranean and the fighting in Libya. All at a time when Turkey and Russia maneuver to avoid a direct military clash in Idlib, the last stronghold of the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (SNA) rebels against Russian-backed Syrian government forces.
The economic zone, or EEZ, would block a planned pipeline that would link the EU to Israeli and Cypriot gas supplies.
If successfully enforced, the zone, coupled with Turkey’s military performance in Syria with the downing of three Syrian warplanes in as many days, would signal to regional hegemonic hopefuls, namely Saudi Arabia and the UAE, that financial muscle may not be enough to impose their will.
Ironically, one key to accommodation that could have reduced the risk of the ideological and geopolitical fuse blowing up and may have contributed to creating an environment of cooperation rather than confrontation lies on the divided island of Cyprus.
Turkey, beyond insisting that Turkish participation is a sine-qua-non for any successful exploitation of Eastern Mediterranean gas, has opposed a role for predominantly Greek-Cypriot Cyprus without the inclusion of the island’s self-declared independent Turkish Cypriot north.
Turkey, which has troops in the north ever since it invaded the island in 1974, is the only country to have recognized the region as an independent state.
The idea of including northern Cyprus may be a pie in the sky in an environment in which geopolitics is a zero-sum game with civilizationalists, nationalists, and autocrats leaving little space for power sharing. And Europe is too preoccupied with internal problems, and most recently with a new looming Syrian refugee crisis, to project a cohesive and inclusive policy approach.
Scholar and commentator Hussein Ibish cautioned that “all the elements that have compelled the parties to the eastern Mediterranean natural gas competition to develop local alliances that are increasingly melding with other strategic, diplomatic, and political contests appears likely to continue.”
Mr. Ibish blamed tension in the Eastern Mediterranean on the “strongly pro-Islamist orientation” of Turkey as “a budding would-be regional economic and political hegemon” rather than on multiple would-be hegemons.
Nonetheless, his conclusion stands that in the Eastern Mediterranean “disputes arising over narrow issues such as natural gas reserves will continue to take on far broader significance.”
Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture
This story first appeared on Inside Arabia
A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud, Itunes, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spreaker, Pocket Casts, Tumblr, Podbean, Audecibel, Patreon and Castbox.
Toilet Paper Blues: Coronavirus and Pandemic
Pantries
by Dr Binoy Kampmark
One item has risen in prominence in the purchasing schedule. A visit to various shopping outlets in Australia – at least in cities – will greet the customer with shelves emptied of toilet paper. The phenomenon struck the BBC as amusing enough to run an image of a toilet roll emptied of paper with the question: “Does this strike fear into your heart?”
A Terrifying Scenario: Coronavirus in ‘Quarantined’ Gaza
by Dr Ramzy Baroud
What if the Coronavirus reaches the besieged Gaza Strip? While the question carries great urgency for all Palestinians living under Israel’s military occupation, the Gaza situation is particularly complex and extremely worrying.
Crisis Solution – Return the Region to United Nations Resolution 181
by Dan Lieberman
Israel has two directions — either succeeding in fulfilling most of the proposals made by the World Zionist organization at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, or installing a democratic one-state for all inhabitants in the area of the earlier British Mandate, which means reverting to a more proper UN Resolution 181. The former direction will have grave consequences for the entire world. The latter direction will have great benefits for everyone, including the free, democratic, and social-minded Israelis.
The kleptomaniac
by Sally Dugman
Watch out, I recommend, for narassistic psychopaths in your life. Often they are kleptomaniacs, who do everything to destroy others and gain something for themselves. I should know since my mother’s side of the family has included males with this dreadful affliction since the 1600’s.
Wake-up Call to Soren Government: Thousands gather in Ranchi to demand rejection of NPR in Jharkhand
Press Release
Thousands of people, from across Jharkhand, gathered at Raj Bhawan (Ranchi) today to demand that the Hemant Soren government rejects NPR and stops all NPR-related activities. Many people’s organisations (partial list attached) participated in this dharna, convened by Jharkhand Janadhikar Mahasabha. Jharkhand’s main communities – hindus, muslims, christians, dalits, adivasis and others – were all well represented.
The Great Indian Liberal Trap
by Parvez Alam
We are living in the times of abysmal abnormalities. Violence has taken the precedence over dialogue. Witch-hunting is becoming vogue in the social sphere. Hatred is cherished. Surveillance and
censorship is no exception. Everyday life is shaped by confusion and uncertainty. Facts and emotions are wedded to construct logic and truth. Justice means denial of justice of one to suit the consciousness.
An Open Letter to Harsh Vardhan Shringla (Indian’s Foreign External Affairs Secretary)
by Taj Hashmi
I write this open letter to question you most respectfully why you told a seminar in Dhaka on 2nd March that the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) passed by Indian parliament last year was misunderstood by many, also in Bangladesh. Although I can’t disagree with you more that: “This is a proactive legislation that has been undertaken on humanitarian grounds….the people who were refugees or faced political persecution and came to India within a cut off time were allowed fast track citizenship,” yet I consider the whole thing is possibly an internal
affair of your country.
Song of Requiem For the 46… and Counting
by Nalini Priyadarshni
ravaged by my kith, shamed by my kin
I bewail my destiny
marked with massacre and pogroms
where justice is branded and auctioned off
to the highest bidder
I am Delhi
Your Beloved!!
by Sonali Chanda
Call her for once,call her by her name,
Another birth you may not born,
To call her once again!!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.