Win/Win CO2 Solutions Group Policy and Analysis Brief
Turning Back the Famine Clock while Sequestering Carbon
Of the many co-benefits of adopting the win/win ecosolutions approach which we are urging that countries make their first response to reducing atmospheric carbon, none is more important than how this would also vastly improve regional and global food security.
There may be a debate among climate activists and climate skeptics about the causes, timing, scale and best responses to climate change, but there is no debate about the looming global food crisis. There is, however, widespread ignorance. While experts have been sounding the alarm for years, most people, particularly in the developed world, are not yet even aware that for much of the world’s population, the “famine clock” is inexorably ticking towards midnight.
A few statistics and conclusions from relevant studies underscore the magnitude of the problem. According to the United Nations, one in nine people in the world currently is undernourished, many of them children. It is projected that world population will increase by an additional 2 billion people by 2050. These projections are particularly significantly in light of the current internationally-agreed upon UN Sustainable Development Goal of achieving zero hunger by 2030.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says “World hunger is on the rise and the leading causes are: climate variability and extremes. Unpredictable and harsh conditions are making it harder to produce the food we need for a growing population …” At the same time, the agriculture resource base is shrinking, largely due to degradation by poor farming practices that lead to loss of top soil through erosion, increasing salinity and other human- caused damage. The convergence of these trends led the FAO deputy director to estimate several years ago that unless something drastic is done to reverse them, the world can count on less that 60 future harvests.
In January, 2019 a blue ribbon commission issued a report on global food needs and what has to be done to provide them on a sustainable basis beyond 2050. The “Food in the Anthropocene: The EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems,” concluded among other things that “The current global food system is unsustainable and requires an agricultural revolution that is based on sustainable intensification and driven by sustainability and system innovation.”
But all these dire predictions are complicated by the fact that no one can confidently predict the impacts that climate change may have in the coming decades on regional and global food supplies. These could include drought, the effect of temperature change on growing seasons and conditions, the spread of pests and plant diseases and other factors that can have direct and indirect effects on food production.
There are already examples from around the world of the impacts a changing climate can have. The price of potatoes in Germany increased by 50% in 2018 because a drought during the growing season drastically reduced yields for current consumption and the seed crop for next year’s production. Unseasonably cold and snowy conditions in Eastern North America prevented much of the fall harvest of potatoes and other root crops, raising prices. That same wet weather pattern in the American mid-west prevented many farmers from preparing their fields in the fall for planting corn in 2019, forcing them to fall back on soy beans, which are a glut on the market in part due to the U.S.-China trade dispute. The International Grains Council reported in December, 2018 that world grain production was down year-to-year for the third time and that demand outstripped supply once again. Australia is experiencing its worst drought in living memory, sparking widespread wildfires and major agricultural losses. There are similar warning signs in most regions of the world.
Over the years, there have been many predictions of widespread famine, from the time of Malthus through Paul Erlich, author of the popular book, The Population Bomb, in the late 20th Century. Until now, however, mankind has been able to at least slow the famine clock by such things as converting new land to agriculture, improving productivity through improved crop and livestock varieties, developing and deploying more efficient mechanized industrial farming techniques, improved irrigation, implementing the widespread use of artificial fertilizers and agrichemicals and more efficient and widespread exploitation of marine fisheries. While there is still much that science can do, such as continuing to improve crop resilience to temperature extremes, the marginal improvements that are likely to result from these efforts will probably not be adequate to significantly bend the trend lines we confront. At some unpredictable future point, those lines of increasing demand and a diminishing food resource base, set against the poorly understood regional impacts of climate change, will inevitably cross, resulting in widespread global famine.
The future food crisis will not affect everyone in the world equally, of course. The richest nations and the wealthiest individuals will not be as critically affected as most of the world will be when we reach the 60-harvest tipping point. They will have the resources to command whatever food is available, at least for a time. As is always the case, famine will take its greatest toll on the poor, the marginalized and especially the children and the elderly.
However, while the wealthiest individuals and nations may be the last to directly face food shortages, they still have a strong stake now in trying to avert the looming food crisis for reasons of enlightened self interest alone, if not humanitarian concern. No nation and no individual will be completely immune. Inevitably, there will be massive social, economic and political upheavals and disruptions, mass migrations and even wars, all of which will have worldwide impacts.
The Paris Climate Accords recognized the importance of addressing food security within the context of dealing with climate change. The Preamble to the agreement calls on signatory nations to recognize “the fundamental priority of safeguarding food security and ending hunger, and the particular vulnerabilities of food production systems to the adverse impacts of climate change.” Article 2 calls for “Increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production.”
The win/win CO2 ecosolutions approach we advocate can effectively head off the coming food crisis while also dealing with climate concerns, all within the context of the Paris Accords.
It is really all about carbon
There is perhaps no better single indicator of the health and productivity of crop agriculture and grazing lands than the levels of carbon in the soil, generally referred to as “soil organic matter” (SOM) and “soil organic carbon” (SOC). All life forms on earth are carbon-based. All carbon in the soils and in the tissues of virtually all life forms is the direct or indirect result of photosynthesis, the process by which green plants harness sunlight to break apart CO2, release most of the oxygen and use the carbon for growth. Wherever there are growing plants some atmospheric carbon is being sequestered. It can accumulate and remain sequestered in healthy soils for very long periods of time. Some soil carbon has been carbon-dated at thousands of years old. (All fossil fuels, of course, are photosynthesis-based, consisting largely of carbon fixed from the atmosphere by plants millions of years ago.)
As a general rule, the greater the level of soil carbon the more potentially productive grazing and other agricultural lands are. And since all this SOC is the result of fixing atmospheric carbon, the higher the SOC, the greater the amount of atmospheric carbon that has been removed from the atmosphere. There can be no question about how significant this mechanism is. The world’s soils are a huge carbon “sink.” It is estimated that world’s soils contain around 3000 Gigatonnes of carbon. Contrast that with the estimated 2018 human-caused emissions of about 37 Gigatonnes of CO2 (which contain about 10 Gigatonnes of carbon since the carbon atom is only 12/44ths of the CO2 molecule by weight). This means that just the earth’s soils already store about 300 times the total global 2018 human CO2 emissions. Together, the “land sink,” (the soil plus vegetation) continues to absorb about 25% of annual carbon emissions. To the surprise of some scientists, that proportion has remained relatively constant even as global annual emissions have increased. This is largely attributable to increased concentrations of CO2 acting as a natural “fertilizer” for green plants, sequestering more carbon in plant biomass and in the soil as well.
Achieving Both Maximum Carbon Sequestration and Food Production
To a certain extent, some carbon is being sequestered in soil any time terrestrial plant photosynthesis is taking place. In poor and degrading soils, however, or under poor and unsustainable agricultural practices, more carbon and other greenhouse gases (GHG) may actually be emitted by soil than are being sequestered by the plants and the soil organism community. Since SOC is the prime indicator of soil health and potential productivity, improving food production on a long term sustainable basis requires using agricultural and grazing practices that sequester the maximum possible amount of atmospheric carbon. In terms of reducing CO2 levels, as noted above, every ton of carbon sequestered in natural systems removes about 3.8 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere.
The best and most comprehensive application of these best-management practices to increase soil carbon levels is generally referred to as “regenerative farming” and “regenerative grazing.” There is no widely accepted single definition of these terms. But there would be wide agreement that any definition of regenerative farming at least would include five basic principles. First, very limited or no tillage to protect soil structure, biodiversity and prevent the oxidation of soil carbon. Second, protecting the soil by leaving sufficient mulch on the soil surface to prevent erosion, control weeds, etc. Third, promote biological diversity (above and below ground) by cash crop rotation and the use of multispecies cover crops to maintain living roots in the soil for the maximum period weather allows while also leaving plant residue on the soil surface. Fourth; no use, or only minimal use, of inputs such as nitrogen fertilizer, pesticides, fungicides and herbicides. Fifth, integrated livestock grazing of cover crops and crop residues. A generally accepted definition of regenerative grazing would embody these same objectives. However, it would emphasize managing the timing, frequency and intensity of grazing to achieve optimum forage production consistent with simultaneously achieving optimum rangeland and pasture-based forage production, enhanced wildlife habitat values, greater biodiversity and improved watershed integrity.
There are a number of variations on this regenerative theme, such as Permaculture, organic farming, regenerative organic agriculture, conservation agriculture, mob grazing, rotational grazing and others. But regenerative agriculture and regenerative grazing are the most all- encompassing approaches and the ones that are most likely to result in both maximum carbon sequestration and maximum food and forage production in an environmentally regenerative way.
Because these regenerative practices can provide equivalent or higher yields with fewer costly inputs such as fuel and agrichemicals, they can be much more profitable than conventional agricultural methods. See, for example, a video of Gabe Brown, an internationally recognized regenerative farming and ranching pioneer, talking about his corn crop several years ago being more than 25% larger than the average for his county in North Dakota that year at about a third of the production cost of his conventionally-farming neighbors. It is at about 1:24 minutes here. (We link to several of the best videos of Gabe Brown explaining his approach and some of his results on our video page here.)
The Rodale Institute, probably the world’s leading advocate of regenerative organic agriculture (which is a somewhat more restrictive variant that emphasizes use of manure and mulch and uses no artificial fertilizers or agrichemicals of any kind) has extensive comparisons showing comparable or improved yields and lower input costs compared to conventional agriculture.
Dr. David Johnson at New Mexico State University has done extensive field demonstrations on desert soils that are producing vastly improved yields compared to conventional methods. He achieves them largely by inoculating soils with a small amount of an easily and cheaply produced specialized type of compost that rapidly restore soil microbiomes. These restored microbiomes change the soil’s fungal/bacterial ratio to levels that actively favor crop production and discourage weeds. Too often, the microbiomes in most agricultural soil have a fungal/bacterial ratio that fosters diseases and pests and favors the growth of weeds while greatly diminishing crop yields. As a result, farmers must resort to applying costly agrichemicals to try to compensate for the negative effects of this imbalance. In the process, they are seriously damaging the microbiomes of their soils, making the problem increasingly worse.
Using his technique, which he calls Biologically Enhanced Agricultural Management (BEAM) Dr. Johnson has doubled chili and cotton production and improved the yields of a number of other crops as well. See, for example, his 2018 report of his results on his video, beginning at about minute 13:12. (A number of other outstanding videos by Dr. Johnson are also linked from our video page.)
In his field demonstrations on desert sandy soils, Dr. Johnson has also produced more biomass annually per acre than does a tropical rain forest, the world’s most productive natural system! With the BEAM approach, enormous quantities of atmospheric carbon are sequestered, enough so that he estimates that managing only about 25% of the world’s arable land (i.e. land that is suitable for growing crops and not including rangelands or forests) under a BEAM approach could alone sequester all anthropogenic (human-caused) CO2 emissions while vastly improving crop yields at the same time!
In addition to the advantages already cited, the food produced by regenerative agricultural and grazing management is of better quality. More micronutrients are available to the plants so the crops are more nutrient-dense. Because the eggs, meat and dairy products are from animals that have been raised on pasture to the maximum extent possible, they are of higher quality as well.
Successfully dealing with too much or too little water
One reason that soil carbon levels are so closely correlated with crop and rangeland productivity is that SOM acts much like a sponge to absorb water. This absorbed water is then available to plants as they grow, making them much less dependent on timely and adequate rainfall or on irrigation than are crops grown in soils with lower SOM. A generally accepted rule is that every 1% increase in soil carbon stores about 20,000 gallons of additional water per acre. It is common for soil carbon levels in land converted to regenerative management practices to increase SOM by several percent in just the first few years and even more over an extended period. In these systems, soil carbon is usually being sequestered over time at ever deeper soil levels, continuing to increase the total water storage capacity even more. For example, over about twenty years, soils on Gabe Brown’s North Dakota farm increased from just under 2% SOM to over 11% in some places. That means that he can store about 180,000 gallons/acre more water in his soils than he could when he started farming with regenerative agriculture practices. In his annual 15 inch precipitation zone, that is a huge benefit.
In fact, it has been estimated that the potential for water storage in high carbon soils worldwide is far greater than the amount of fresh water in all the lakes, reservoirs and water courses on earth! It is the cheapest, most environmentally sound way to store water in a changing climate.
While crop yields produced by regenerative methods are generally equivalent or even superior to yields from conventional agricultural practices in average conditions, in times of drought they are significantly higher, largely due to this water holding capacity of the increased SOM. Dealing with periodic drought has been a problem throughout human history in many parts of the world. But in a future that may hold even more rapid and difficult-to-predict regional climate changes, this increased drought tolerance becomes even more critical. It can help ensure the very viability of agricultural operations of all sizes and underpin global food security at the same time because it can provide this cushion for farmers to cope with periodic drought years. Regenerative ranching practices similarly make rangelands more drought resistant than land managed using more conventional methods.
While too little precipitation is a serious issue in food production, too much precipitation coming too quickly can also be harmful. One major problem is soil erosion, washing valuable topsoil into watercourses. The silt loading that is deposited in lakes, reservoirs and streams as a result can damage aquatic habitat, degrade water quality and reduce water storage capacity. Because this surface erosion off agricultural lands often contains high levels of fertilizer and other agrichemicals it can significantly damage aquatic and marine ecosystems. Deadly algae blooms in lakes, some rivers and marine problems such as the appearance of the annual “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico and in other locations around the world are largely attributable to these pollutants eroding off of agricultural fields.
When this run off collects in low areas of croplands rather than washing directly into water courses and sits for any period of time it can also destroy crops and hinder or prevent replanting. Excess artificial fertilizer can also leach into ground water and contaminate drinking water. Regenerative agricultural and grazing practices can virtually eliminate all these problems while increasing food quality and quantity and sequestering vast amounts of carbon at the same time.
Apart from the environmental and health damage that surface erosion can cause and its impact on future food production, it also exacerbates downstream flooding. Added to this surface runoff are the vast flows coming from “tiling” (drainage pipes beneath many fields). These systems have to be installed in many places to dry fields for planting and harvesting because the conventional agricultural practices have damaged soil structure. Such flooding events are not only life threatening but cause major economic losses as well. Reducing surface runoff and erosion upstream by means of storing precipitation in soils is the best way to reduce downstream flooding.
Just as increasing SOM is a major factor in reducing the impact of drought, sequestering more carbon in soils greatly limits flows from severe rainfall and snowmelt events. This is because increasing SOM also increases the ability of soil to infiltrate and store rainfall, Healthy soil communities of fungal, bacterial and other soil organisms utilize increased soil carbon to actually change the structure of the soil, making it less compact and more porous and absorptive than soil in conventionally farmed fields. As a result, it is easier for water to rapidly infiltrate into the soil.
Researchers perform simple tests to determine the infiltration rates of agricultural soils. It is not uncommon for conventionally-farmed fields to have an infiltration rate of only about an inch of water per hour or less due largely to soil compaction and loss of the soil structure that would normally be created by healthy soil communities. If a rainfall event exceeds the infiltration rate of the soil, the excess water that cannot be infiltrated runs off, causing the kinds of cascading damages outlined above. Of course, this runoff water also will not be available to crops in the future as it would be if absorbed in the soil.
In fields with higher SOM and healthy communities of soil organisms, infiltration rates are much higher, commonly several inches per hour or even more. Gabe Brown, the regenerative agriculture pioneer mentioned above, had an infiltration rate of only about one half inch per hour on his croplands when he started ranching about 20 years ago. Now, he reports that researchers have found that some of his fields can infiltrate 2 inches of water in just 26 seconds! To infiltrate two inches of water in 26 minutes would be impressive. With these infiltration rates, not only will Brown’s fields not experience any real surface run off but they will capture and store all of the precipitation available in his 15 inch annual precipitation zone. He also recounts the occasion when his farm successfully absorbed a 13-inch-in-24-hour rainfall event that left the fields of his conventionally-farming neighbors flooded for weeks. See his presentation on this, and the actual videos the researchers took showing the infiltration of 2 inches in just 26 seconds, at about the 1:06:15 point in his video presentation here.
If most of the agricultural and grazing land in the headwaters watersheds of river systems prone to flooding were managed using regenerative practices such as Gabe Brown employs, downstream flooding could be greatly reduced or even prevented. In addition, the absorbed water upstream would be slowly released from recharged water tables, augmenting stream and river flows through the season as well as helping protect the crops and rangelands from drought. At the same time, these practices increase food quality and quantity and sequester vast amounts of atmospheric carbon.
Adequate water is one of the essentials for plant life. It has often been observed that it is not so much the amount of precipitation received that counts but how much of it can be infiltrated, stored and utilized in crop production. Regenerative agricultural and grazing practices make it possible to cheaply and efficiently capture and store in soils most of whatever precipitation is available during the year.
Quickly creating topsoil while reducing emissions and sequestering carbon
The UN FAO, the organization making the less-than-60-harvests-left warning cited above, points to the loss of topsoil as one of the primary reason for the coming food crisis. It estimates that in 2050, when we will have to feed 50% more people than we do now, the world will have only about a quarter of the productive and arable land base per capita to accomplish that compared to what was available per capita in 1960. The Global Land Outlook, a report issued under the auspices of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, estimates that a third of the world’s fertile soil has already been lost and that 24 billion tons of productive topsoil are being lost every year.
“Top soil” is generally defined as the carbon-rich top layer of soil in which plants grow and which contains the nutrients that plants need to survive and thrive. It is estimated that it takes nature about 1000 years to create an inch of topsoil. Regenerative agriculture and grazing practices, however, can create a foot or more of topsoil in less than a decade. The key is the acceleration of carbon sequestration and the restoration of healthy soil communities. In most cases, this process of healing the soil requires little or nothing in the way of external inputs of fertilizer or agrichemicals. In fact, one of the significant reasons many agricultural soils are currently deteriorating is because of the cascading damage that nitrogen fertilizers, pesticides and other agrichemicals do to the communities of soil organisms that are so critical to soil health and productivity. By contrast, the healthy soil communities created by regenerative management make the macro and micronutrients in the soil more readily accessible to plants. The result is this rapidly-generated topsoil contains everything needed for maximum productivity.
From the perspective of the current climate debate, it is particularly significant to understand that restoring the productivity of agricultural and rangeland soils effectively controls CO2 on “both sides” of the atmospheric carbon equation. As noted above, the world’s degraded soils currently are in fact significant sources of CO2 as the carbon sequestered in them in past years oxidizes when exposed to the air through erosion or conventional plowing. (Turning over soil through traditional or conventional tillage, something not done in regenerative agriculture, not only oxidizes this sequestered soil carbon as CO2 but it also seriously harms the soil organism communities that are essential to efficient carbon sequestration among other benefits.) As soon as degrading land is placed under regenerative practices, it quickly ceases to be a net emitter of CO2. That controls CO2 on one side of the equation. As these regenerative practices restore a properly functioning plant and soil organism community, these lands become ever more effective carbon sinks, controlling atmospheric carbon on the other side of the equation..
Benefitting the world’s poor while sequestering carbon and achieving food security
The earth’s upper atmosphere weather patterns efficiently mix CO2 so atmospheric levels are relatively uniform worldwide and not concentrated over the regions where most of it is being emitted. This means that efforts to remove atmospheric carbon to reduce global levels do not necessarily have to be in the proximity of the source of those emissions. Removing CO2 anywhere on the planet is equally effective in reducing the global CO2 loading. A ton of CO2 removed is a ton of CO2 removed, regardless of where that happens.
This can be of particular significance when developing projects that both enhance food security while also sequestering atmospheric carbon. The poorest nations and the poorest portions of many developing nations tend to have the highest levels of food insecurity. As noted, the UN says about one in nine people in the world are undernourished today and almost half of the deaths of children under age five worldwide are due to malnutrition. While the world produces enough food to feed everyone adequately, too often it is unaffordable or is not available where the need is the greatest. Local and regional social, climatic, infrastructure, economic and resource-related issues can be among the factors that influence food security and availability in these areas. Targeting projects to sequester carbon while improving food production to these problem areas may not necessarily solve all of these potential causes of hunger but they can certainly deal with some of them. Since removing CO2 anywhere on earth is equally beneficial, it makes the most sense to give priority to developing soil carbon sequestration programs in those countries and areas where food insecurity is a major problem.
One of the puzzling realities of the spread of regenerative agricultural and grazing practices in developed nations is that many farmers and ranchers do not adopt them, even when they can see the greater productivity and profitability of their neighbors who have. It is common for there to be stark contrasts in productivity, topsoil depth, soil erosion, drought resistance, water infiltration rates and other factors literally “across the fence line” between an operation that employs regenerative techniques and one that still uses conventional techniques. (See for example, “Carbon that Counts,” (an article by world renowned regenerative agriculture expert and pioneer Dr. Christine Jones, showing these kinds of contrasts between Winona, a farm in Australia, and the neighboring property.)
Among the social advantages of promoting regenerative practices to enhance food production and sequester carbon is empowering women in many developing nations and giving them additional income and resources to benefit their families and especially their children. A good example of how improved grazing and agricultural processes have changed the life of one woman in Africa is here at about minutes 19:30 and 32:00.
Perhaps because they live closer to potential starvation, more people in the developing world appear to be more open to adopting the regenerative practices that increase their own food security than are many producers in the developed countries. In many cases, these practices reflect the restoration of traditional practices that were abandoned in favor of more “modern” techniques. A good example is the case study by Eric Schwennesen, a member of Win/Win CO2 Solutions Group’s Advisory Board, who has long experience helping implement regenerative grazing practices in developing countries. He recounts how the villagers in a demonstration village for a World Bank project in Chad that he was coordinating rapidly and expertly adopted techniques that greatly increased the forage available for their livestock. This allowed them to increase their herds, resulting in significant increases in their income with all the benefits that brought, including improved housing. Word of the success of these villagers quickly spread through the region and representatives of other villages were walking 50 miles and more to ask for help implementing it in their areas as well. However, as he recounts, sadly the resources were simply not available at the time to accommodate all of these requests.
The fact that regenerative practices reduce and often eliminate the need for commercial fertilizer and agrichemicals is an additional advantage for subsistence farmers and grazers in the developing world. These inputs that are an essential part of most “modern” agricultural practices can be prohibitively expensive for them.
Beyond the expense, the manufacture, transportation and application of artificial fertilizers and agrichemicals, no matter where they are used have significant global carbon footprints in their own right. It is estimated, for example, that the production of nitrogen fertilizer alone accounts for about 1% of global CO2 emissions. In the United States, it has been estimated that about 80% of production costs have some fossil fuel connection, either in manufacture, transportation or application.
Climate scientists recently have urgently warned that unless very aggressive action is taken, disastrous climate impacts may be more imminent than had been previously thought. The reality, however, is that there are almost no politically and economically realistic ways to achieve the reductions they say are necessary. Sequestration in natural systems is the standout exception. It is the all around best, least cost, least disruptive and most readily available and proven method to accomplish these goals. It would have to be aggressively employed on a global scale to have the impact that these scientists say is necessary. But the good news is that, unlike virtually all the alternatives being considered, rapid, wide-scale application is feasible. And for the reasons outlined above, one of the best places to quickly and aggressively implement regenerative practices may be in the developing world, because in addition to sequestering carbon, it would also begin to effectively deal with the food security crisis and have major social and economic benefits for some of the world’s poorest people. Because many of these countries and their people are already acutely aware of the food crisis, widespread adoption of techniques that will solve this problem and sequester carbon at the same time make implementation more likely.
One example of the potential multiple benefits of sequestering carbon while increasing agricultural productivity and food security is what is already beginning to happen in the Sahelian region of North Africa. There, dairy cooperatives and businesses are replacing expensive imported powdered milk with lower cost milk produced locally. This not only improves food security but also provides jobs while providing a better product at the same time. By using regenerative grazing practices on the pasture lands in these countries, productivity and drought resistance can be greatly increased as well. It is estimated that these Sahelian countries could sequester about twice their current total annual carbon emissions just by improving their grazing lands, making all of them net negative CO2 emitters.
Two other institutional and financial factors also argue strongly for focusing carbon sequestration efforts in the developing world. One is that a framework for crediting large emitter nations with offsets for carbon sequestered in another country is already provided in the Paris Accords and the implementation guidelines. It may well be that this would be one of the most cost effective ways for developed nations to offset some of their emissions even without factoring in the benefits from increasing food security. Of course, doing so would produce many addition al co-benefits such as generating a range of environmental benefits. .
The second key factor is that most of the funding necessary to implement the best regenerative farming and ranching programs on a large scale in developing nations is already available or has been promised. Ongoing traditional foreign aid programs could be directed more towards this approach to rural development in these countries, The developed nations and development entities such as the World Bank also have pledged hundreds of billions of dollars to help developing nations adapt and mitigate climate change and pursue low carbon energy futures. Enhancing food security while sequestering the carbon they are emitting would be a double win in accomplishing these goals.
Summary
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe” – John Muir
This quote by this pioneering American naturalist and environmental philosopher aptly describes the symbiotic interrelationship of the various co-benefits of the win/win ecosolutions approach to reducing atmospheric carbon loadings.
The looming world food crisis is a serious and potentially catastrophic problem in its own right that the world must confront on an urgent basis. As Muir points out, unless we deal with it effectively, it will impact many other things it is “hitched” to. Many people believe that increasing atmospheric GHG concentrations also poses an existential threat. We have proven strategies that can effectively deal with both of these issues and generate a range of other co-benefits at the same time. It only makes good sense to adopt them. They truly are win/win/win/win.