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Implementing New Technologies
for Sustainable
Development of Small Island Developing States
Technical Expert Presentation to the United Nations General Assembly
Preparatory Meetings for the 2007 Commission on Sustainable Development,
February 26 2007
Tom
Goreau, PhD, President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
BACKGROUND
The Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are the first and worst
victims of global climate change. They have already lost most of their corals,
fisheries, and shore protection to global warming, and will lose the rest in a
few years if current trends continue. Every year more and more low-lying islands
vanish beneath the waves. SIDS can take no further warming or sea level rise.
Yet at present CO2, temperature, and sea level rise are all accelerating and
increasing faster than the rates projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC). But we have not yet felt the impacts because the excess
CO2 already in the atmosphere will continue to absorb heat for centuries, and
its full surface warming will be felt only when the deep sea heats up and ice
caps melt, which takes up to thousands of years.
The last time global temperatures were 1 degree C above today’s values,
sea levels were 8 meters (25 feet) higher than they are now, and hippopotamuses
and crocodiles flourished in London, England. At that time CO2 was more than
one third less than it is already, so the impacts caused by the present
levels of CO2 will be far larger. The last time temperatures were 3-5 degrees
higher than today, sea levels were around 30 meters (or a hundred feet) higher
than now. That is where we are headed if we don’t very urgently reverse our
course. For SIDS there is no time left to lose.
It is clear that prevent these impacts we must reduce CO2 by more than
one third below present levels, yet even if current agreements and conventions
were lived up to, they would only marginally slow the rate of increase,
condemning coral reefs to death from heat shock and low lying islands to
drowning. Stabilizing CO2 is simple, we just must put less into the atmosphere
and remove more from it. This means large scale development of clean energy
sources and drawing down the existing excess CO2. It is critical to realize that
increases in energy efficiency to 100% and sequestering ALL fossil fuel CO2,
would not reduce the current excess CO2 built up over the last century.
Only actually removing CO2 from the atmosphere and permanent storage will work.
Cost-effective technologies are critically
needed by SIDS to sustainably provide food from land and sea, restore fisheries
and coral reefs, protect beaches and shorelines from rising sea level, provide
clean and affordable energy for development, increase soil productivity, prevent
pollution, and reverse global climate change. Collaborative approaches, focused
on endogenous capacity development coupled to technology transfer, are needed to
implement proven technologies to meet these critical needs. The most important
proven new technologies are not being currently applied, due to insufficient
knowledge of their potential, lack of funding, lack of organization to implement
them, lack of training, and lack of appropriate international agreements that
reward them. SIDS have begun to take the lead in developing and applying new
technologies for global sustainable development, thereby locally reversing
destructive impacts of global change. Some of these critical technologies are
outlined here, along with policy steps to implement them on the scale needed.
The solutions are at hand, proven, and cost effective, but we just aren’t using
them.
ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION
Due to lack of
industrial development and low per capita energy use, SIDS are negligible
sources of atmospheric pollution. These include gas, aerosol, and particulate
pollutants that warm the earth, deplete the ozone layer, cause acid rain,
increase smog, and deposit toxic metals and persistent organic pollutants.
However, due to the global distribution of these pollutants by winds, SIDS will
be the first and worst victims of their production elsewhere especially through
global warming and sea level rise. Although climate change agreements
technically do not fall under the purview of CSD, it is clear that there can be
no real sustainable development without addressing climate issues. Full and
complete accounting of all greenhouse gas sources and sinks is needed in the
climate treaties, long term carbon sinks need to be recognized and rewarded, and
a mechanism must be found to stabilize atmospheric composition at safe levels
for future generations.
INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT
Many SIDS
possess huge clean energy resources that are untapped, primarily tidal and
solar. We need to use these resources to generate clean industries that are
based on renewable natural resources by conserving our ecosystems, enhancing
their productivity, and restoring damaged forests and reefs to both store more
carbon and be more productive. Solar and wind are excellent energy resources for
SIDS but are still either too expensive or limited in intensity and reliability
in many places. Wind is not reliable except for some islands in the Caribbean
and Pacific Trade Wind Zones, while solar panels are too expensive, due to lack
of mass production. Support is needed for the development and large-scale
production of cheaper solar panels. Energy taxes should pay the real long-term
costs of air pollution by greenhouse gases.
NEW SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT TECHNOLOGIES FOR SIDS TO ADAPT TO AND PREVENT CLIMATE CHANGE AND
INCREASE RENEWABLE ENERGY RESOURCES
Many remarkable,
new, proven, cost-effective technologies could greatly contribute to sustainable
development but are currently unfunded, and require policies to promote and fund
their implementation on a large-scale. They include:
OCEAN TIDAL ENERGY
Of all the renewable energy technologies, only two, solar and tidal
energy, have the capacity to meet the Earth’s energy demands. Unfortunately
solar energy is still much more expensive than fossil fuels, and will remain so
until there is large scale investment in mass production to drive the price down
to a competitive level. This needs to be done urgently. The only abundant
sustainable energy resource that is already cost competitive with fossil fuels
is the energy of the earth’s tides, which are not to be confused with tidal
waves (tsunamis), wave energy, or thermal energy. These are widely distributed
and highly reliable: we can accurately predict tides anywhere thousands of years
in the future. Although proven and cost effective, there is no large-scale
investment in tidal energy, which needs to be urgently changed.
Tidal energy is
the largest sustainable and non-polluting energy resource of almost all Pacific
and Indian Ocean island nations, Cape Verde, some sites in the Caribbean, and
many coastal Least Developed Countries (such as Guinea-Bissau and Guyana), but
is totally unutilized. Tidal energy is yet to be recognized as a viable
renewable energy resource by governments and funding agencies, because of lack
of adequate information and advocacy, even though it is far cheaper than solar
energy and more abundant than wind, hydro, or geothermal power. Cost-competitive
cross flow vertical axis turbines to turn tidal currents into electrical
currents are already available. Small pilot projects in remote rural areas have
been built in the Brazilian Amazon and the Philippines. These new turbines can
also be used for river power without dams in high, wet islands land-locked
countries that are not dry and flat. Turbines to tap tidal and river power can
be used wherever there are adequate currents, can range in scale from very small
and isolated communities to that of the largest power plants, and be integrated
with other energy systems.
In terms of
policy what is required are a) recognition of tidal energy as an energy
technology deserving international funding, and b) support for systematic
assessment of the tidal energy resources of SIDS by making measurements of the
speed and duration of currents at all potential sites to devise effective plans
to tap their vast, unutilized energy.
BIOMASS ENERGY
New kilns are
available that allow any biomass, not just plant oils and sugars, to be
converted into hydrogen based biofuels. This is a process distinct from the
biodiesel that can be made from palm oils or alcohol from sugar cane, and allows
non-agricultural land to be a source of fuels, avoiding conflict with food
production as do ethanol and oil fuels. Most SIDS have large areas of coconut
palms with little economic value but great potential for biofuels, if the low
productivity caused by poor soil fertility is remediated. If biomass is managed
renewably, the fuels produced do not add net new carbon to the atmosphere. They
can be produced in areas that are not suitable to for agriculture, unlike
ethanol producing crops that require the best soils or heavy fertilization.
Biofuel
production should be based on non-edible or non-usable biomass. Even more
important, such fuels can actually be carbon negative, when more carbon is
stored in soil than is burned as fuel. In that case they act to reduce
atmospheric carbon dioxide. What is required in terms of policy action is
introduction of carbon taxes and carbon trading schemes that take total and net
carbon balance of fuel production and use into account, and pays for the full
impacts of reversing their damage and sequestering their carbon. Biomass fuels
that produce no net carbon dioxide should not be taxed, and carbon negative are
receive fuels should receive a net payment from users of fossil fuels that add
emit greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
CARBON SEQUESTRATION
The new biomass
kilns produce carbon negative energy, because they produce more black carbon
char than biofuels. If this char, instead of being burned like charcoal, is
buried, it turns into low cost and permanent carbon sequestration. Unlike the
high technology deep CO2 gas burial currently being examined, which is both
temporary and costly, char and charcoal are perfectly preserved in soils for
hundreds of millions of years. Moreover they greatly improve soil fertility.
This method of creating highly fertile soils was developed by Amazonian Indians
in ancient times, but their methods of making it have only recently been
rediscovered after having been lost for nearly 500 years. Because of the great
benefits of increased soil productivity, this is the most rapid, long lasting,
and cost-effective form of carbon sequestration. Sequestration of CO2 produced
from fossil fuels only partially mitigates the damage caused by their use, but
cannot reduce the already existing excess of CO2 in the atmosphere. Growing
biomass to sequester soil carbon is the only method can actually reduce this
excess and reverse future impacts.
There is 2-4
times more carbon in soil than in all the living biomass of the world, but this
sink is not recognized in the UNFCC, the Kyoto Protocol, or the CDM. Soil is a
superior carbon sink to trees because it much longer lasting. Carbon in living
trees, may burn, be cut, eaten by pests, killed by diseases, or die from drought
or old age, and then the carbon is released back to the atmosphere. Biomass
provides only temporary storage of carbon, but soil and sediment carbon are
long-term carbon sinks. Complete accounting of ALL greenhouse gas sources and
sinks is needed at all time and space scales, and carbon trading agreements
should ONLY recognize and reward permanent sinks, which they don’t do now.
SOIL FERTILITY
RESTORATION
Carbon char in
soils greatly increases soil capacity to store both water and nutrients as long
as the nutrients deficient in the soils are added to it. This can be mostly
cheaply done by using char to absorb and recycle nutrients in waste water
effluents and use them to increase soil productivity, turning poor soils into
rich soils and allow crops to flourish that could not previously be grown,
instead of allowing nutrients to flow into the seas, killing coral reefs and
fisheries.
Current
agricultural practices are mining and destroying soil fertility and increasing
erosion rates. Land management needs to focus on increasing soil productivity by
increasing long-term storage of carbon and nutrients, and preventing weedy algae
from smothering our coastal resources. Reforestation of hillsides is needed to
prevent erosion, recharge aquifers, and reduce floods caused by more intense
rain and storms caused by global warming. Farmers need training in the
principles and practices of restoring long-term fertility of agricultural land
by absorbing nutrients on soil carbon instead of degrading the soil or adding
short acting chemical fertilizers that are largely wasted and quickly flushed
out of the soil into rivers and aquifers.
WASTE RECYCLING
Sewage can be
turned into a non-polluting hydrogen fuel for vehicles and engines, fertilizer,
and clean water using electrical plasma treatment and electro-coagulation of
wastes. These new methods move well beyond composting toilets and anaerobic
digestion technologies, and can be carried out without the large areas needed
for conventional sewage settling ponds and sludge drying areas, which are hard
to find on densely populated islands. However they need considerable electrical
current, and are best carried out in conjunction with large-scale tidal, wind,
or solar generated electricity. The fuels produced are not only clean, they cost
about one third of petroleum based fuels and do not produce greenhouse gases,
therefore acting to reduce future global warming. They can be used to power
vehicles and generators. Sewage collection systems can be turned into fueling
stations and producers of solid fertilizer and clean water on local scales,
replacing large central sewage plants where they now exist.
No country in
the world now treats its sewage to adequate levels to remove and recycle all
nutrients, with the exception of the Turks and Caicos Islands, which requires
all developments to recycle all their wastewater on their own properties for
landscape irrigation with treated effluents. Policies are needed to locally
recycle all waste nutrients on land, increasing soil fertility instead of
polluting aquifers, rivers, and the ocean, causing massive overgrowth of weeds
that kill valuable ecosystems like estuaries and coral reefs. No human generated
nutrient release to the coastal zone should be permitted. Sewage should be
treated as a valuable resource processed to produce clean water, fertilizer, and
fuel rather than something dumped out of sight polluting ground waters and down
stream ecosystems. Maximum use of fuels made from sewage should be promoted.
AQUACULTURE
Severe declines
in fisheries can be reversed by restoring critical degraded habitats such as
coral reefs, mangroves, and riverside vegetation. Many new methods now exist to
propagate the most valuable and over harvested marine fishes and invertebrates
for large-scale cultivation of food and pharmaceuticals. These include sea
cucumbers, algae, sponges, corals, oysters, lobsters, and fishes. Unlike
conventional mariculture, which reduces biodiversity, promotes diseases and
parasites, and pollutes surrounding waters with excrement and rotting of added
feeds, the new methods are free of these serious defects.
What is required
is support for training fishermen in the new more productive and less harmful
techniques, to become sustainable farmers of the sea. Also required are funding
for greatly expanded research and training programs in fisheries management
agencies and in local schools and institutions. Community based management of
marine resource access rights is needed to prevent the “tragedy of the commons”.
CORAL REEF AND
FISHERIES HABITAT RESTORATION
Coral reefs are
the most productive, diverse, and environmentally important habitat in SIDS, but
they are the most vulnerable ecosystem of all to global warming, pollution, and
erosion from deforested land. I have dived for over 50 years and dived in almost
all SIDS. Their corals are largely dead or in critical condition. Even if all
the remaining corals were completely protected, there is too little left to
restore SIDS fisheries, shore protection, tourism, and marine biodiversity. Only
large-scale restoration of degraded habitats can restore their lost
environmental and economic services. Solar, tidal, and wind energy have been
used in more than 20 countries in the Caribbean, Pacific, Indian Ocean, and
Southeast Asia to increase growth rates of corals and marine organisms on
electrically stimulated growing limestone frameworks, which greatly increase
survival of corals under conditions of extreme high temperature stress, and
quickly build up dense fish and shellfish populations. This allows reefs to be
kept alive where they would die, and new reefs and fisheries habitat to be grown
in a few years in places where they cannot recover naturally. Reef fisheries are
collapsing due to habitat destruction as much as over-fishing, so management of
fishing effort alone cannot restore fisheries without large-scale habitat
restoration. Because electric reefs can be built in any size or shape, new
habitat specifically favoring certain species of fish, oysters, lobsters, and
other marine organisms can be grown in areas where they now lack habitat.
Most of the
world’s corals have died in the last few decades and the pace of their
destruction will rapidly increase unless global warming is reversed and
large-scale restoration is funded. There is a need for significant increase of
funding for serious habitat restoration, which will be the only way to maintain
the reefs that provide SIDS with most of their fisheries, tourism economy,
marine biodiversity, and shore protection. Consideration should be given to
encouraging or mandating shore hotels to grow reefs for ecotourism, habitat
restoration, and beach protection, and support for community-based restoration
of reefs to increase sustainable fisheries stocks and catches. Pilot programs to
restore coral reefs with the new technology are already underway in Indonesia,
Philippines and nearly 20 other countries, with only small locally-raised
sources of funding.
SHORE PROTECTION
Healthy coral
reefs are the best shore protection. Low voltage electrolysis of seawater has
been used to grow reefs in front of shorelines to turn severely eroding beaches
into rapid growth in a few years. In the Maldives, the lowest country on earth,
a beach that was being piled high with sandbags to keep trees and buildings from
falling into the sea, grew 15 meters (50 feet) in a few years after a reef was
grown in front of it. It was not damaged by the Tsunami that passed over the
island. This technology is the only hope for low-lying shorelines to protect
themselves from sea level rise while restoring their beaches, fisheries, and
ecotourism. It can use non-polluting local renewable energy resources to grow
ecologically rich natural reef breakwaters at a fraction the cost of seawalls
that provide none of these benefits. These reefs grow at several centimeters per
year, and can keep up with sea level rise. They can be grown on large scales to
protect whole islands wherever tidal energy resources are abundant. The
limestone rock material grown is up to three times stronger than ordinary
concrete, These breakwaters are self repairing because physical damage to
portions of them grows back preferentially. This technology can be used to
provide prefabricated limestone building materials, sand, and aggregate,
replacing mining of reefs and sand.
Sea level rise
has been considerably greater than the upper limit predicted by IPCC, and will
increase greatly in coming years unless greenhouse gas emissions are severely
reduced and carbon sequestration greatly increased. Because an unavoidable
amount of sea level rise may already be in the pipeline even if greenhouse gas
emissions are reduced, polices to promote large-scale increase of soil carbon
sinks to draw down excess atmospheric carbon, and prevent runaway global sea
level and temperature rise. Greatly increased funding is needed for growing
living shore defense reefs around SIDS, using their renewable energy resources,
to enhance, rather than destroy, beaches and coastal ecosystems as seawalls do.
The time for talking is
now over, only rapid action can make a difference!
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