Two arrogant men
To reject thousands of years of indigenous (in its wider sense) and traditional land management as ignorant and devastating is not helpful.
To reject thousands of years of indigenous (in its wider sense) and traditional land management as ignorant and devastating is not helpful.
Policymakers are pouring money into techno-fixes to solve the climate crisis, even though scientific studies indicate nature-based solutions are all-around more effective.
With more and more greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere, making dark earth — or something like it — could be a method of mitigating climate change while supporting agriculture in the tropics.
One of the key learnings of 2021 is the necessity to think AND act in a systemic and holistic way – a manner that builds bridges rather than breaks them down, or questions existing ones.
India has made ambitious pledges to restore forests to tackle climate change, alongside many other countries. But what that goal looks like in practice is not yet well understood.
For Carlos Duarte, the chief science adviser behind Oceans 2050, seaweed farming looks like a vital contribution to saving the planet from climate change and restoring ocean life.
Sustainable farming systems that work in harmony with nature have an essential role to play and farmers want to be part of the movement for change.
Using Forest Research figures, we reckon that planting around 15% of our farm with wood pasture (around a third more than at present) could offset all of our emissions – something which we can definitely achieve without any real loss of agricultural production.
In highlighting how Britain lost half its hedgerow network in only 75 years following the post-WWII move to modernise farming, a recent report from the Council for the Protection of Rural England points out how hedgerows can reduce climate warming by naturally helping to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere.
It would serve us well to consequently apply and further develop known, climate friendly farming techniques before we continue with “precision techniques” on a whim. Unfortunately, in both research and practice this approach is rarely taken.
A key finding of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) new special report is that it is likely that some degree of “afforestation” will be needed to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
Nitrogen fertilizers are not just a technicality, they are a major building block in the industrial, global and capitalist agriculture system. As such they both drive and enable the increasing metabolic rift between human society and the ecosystem that sustains it.