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Could El Niño and climate change spell the end for tropical forests?

Could El Niño and climate change spell the end for tropical forests?

by  on 25 June 2018

In summer 2014, governments across tropical Asia readied for a looming weather and political emergency – potential droughts, crop failures, and food shortages that could stress developing world nations and challenge their ability to respond. According to weather observatories, the chance of an El Niño event occurring before the year’s end was high. The central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean was warming up, a predictive precursor of El Niño, a temporary increase in global temperature that at its worst can generate a worldwide cascade of catastrophic changes to weather patterns.

It was a false alarm. But the following year El Niño materialized with a vengeance. Boosted by the earlier warmth in the Pacific, the 2015-16 El Niño turned out to be one of the strongest events on record. Intense droughts affected almost 40 million people in southern Africa; flooding swept South American countries, displacing 150,000 people; and coral reefs experienced the most significant bleaching event scientists have ever seen, with nearly all corals in some parts of the Great Barrier Reef dying due to the high temperatures.

In space, a new NASA satellite, launched on 2 July 2014, allowed scientists to study the El Niño’s rise and fall, and its effects on the global carbon cycle in greater detail than ever before. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) was equipped with sensitive instruments able to measure atmospheric CO2 concentrations ten times more accurately than previous methods.

Overall, the 2015-16 El Niño led to the fastest rise in atmospheric CO2 on record, and helped push CO2 concentrations above 400 ppm for a full year for the first time in modern history. The OCO-2 findings went deeper. They revealed that the sudden surge in CO2 was greatly enhanced by emissions coming from the tropical forests of South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia – all responding to the El Niño by temporarily shifting from carbon sink to source. However, there were striking regional differences in each forest’s response.

Because El Niño conditions, with their elevated temperatures, may reflect what tropical climates will look like in the future as climate change escalates, such events “represent a massive experiment where we can get a glimpse of how these ecosystems” might respond, said Anders Ahlström, a scientist at Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

And with tropical forests storing almost 250 billion tons of carbon, their fate has major implications for the earth’s atmosphere – and life on earth.

“[T]his research shows that [El Niño] is truly a global phenomenon, impacting all the world’s tropical regions and beyond,” said William Laurance, of James Cook University, Australia, and a Mongabay board member. The “region-specific effects on forests and ecosystems” were intriguing, he said, “reflecting nuances of the global climate that we hadn’t appreciated previously.”

A glimpse of our climate change future

OCO-2 continues to record 100,000 to 200,000 measurements a day as it orbits the earth, documenting CO2 concentrations in regions where terrestrial measurement stations are few and far between. As such, it allows for the pinpointing of carbon sources and sinks in places like the Congo, Amazon and Indonesian rainforests.

Using this data to make large-scale inferences about the global carbon cycle was hailed as “an important milestone,” by Emanuel Gloor, of the University of Leeds. It gets “us closer to near-real-time monitoring of ecosystem function and carbon cycle dynamics,” said Trevor Keenan, of the University of California, Berkeley.

“Previously, limited data in the tropics greatly limited our ability to determine key processes, or even to pin down which regions of the tropics were responding most strongly,” to El Niño events, explained Junjie Liu of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, who led the research.

Liu’s team found that during the 2015-16 El Niño, extreme drought meant trees stopped absorbing CO2 in South America. In Southeast Asia, forest fires raged in extremely dry conditions, quickly releasing stored carbon. And in tropical Africa, high temperatures resulted in increased ecosystem respiration.

Together, the three regions emitted 2.5 gigatons more carbon during the 2015-16 El Niño than during the opposing phase of the cycle, known as La Niña, in 2011, with emissions split roughly evenly between the three forest regions. That’s comparable to “about a third of all the emissions from fossil fuel burning,” commented OCO-2 science team member Scott Denning when the research was published – but it wasn’t the scale of the emissions that surprised Liu.

“I was more surprised by the complexity of the Earth’s carbon-climate system,” she said.

Worsening Amazon drought and tree death

The 2015-16 El Niño brought record-breaking temperatures and the third major droughtin a decade to the Amazon, affecting an area 20 percent greater than ever previously observed.

At first, drought causes trees to absorb less CO2 as they slow their photosynthesis rate, or stop photosynthesizing completely, to conserve water. But if conditions become extremely dry, hydraulic failure may occur: air bubbles form in the trees’ xylem – the channels that carry water from the roots to the canopy, resulting in tree death.

“Once a tree dies it will slowly decompose, releasing all the carbon it had stored in its leaves, stems and roots back up to the atmosphere,” explained Lucy Rowland, of the University of Exeter.

Many species of tree are already near their limit of drought tolerance due to climate change, according to a 2012 study. Even a small shift to drier conditions could lead to hydraulic failure for 70 percent of 226 forest species, the research found. “[R]apid forest collapse as a result of drought could convert the world’s tropical forests from [CO2] sink to source during this century,” the scientists reported.

Climate models predict that Amazon droughts will become more common in the future, said Juan Carlos Jiménez-Muñoz, of the University of Valencia, which could result in an intensifying positive feedback loop. “In simple terms, more warming [leads to] more severe droughts, and maybe [to] more extreme El Niño events, which in turn leads to more severe droughts linked to El Niño conditions.”

Paulo Brando, of the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts, U.S., said that some resilience to droughts is to be expected, because the Amazon rainforest “has adapted to periodic droughts over millions of years.” But when multiple droughts hit in quick succession – as seen in 2005 and 2010, and again with the intense 2015-16 event – there is limited time for recovery, Jiménez-Muñoz said. This reduces forest resilience, increasing the chances of degradation “with implications [for] carbon uptake.”

“A major ‘unknown’ is whether Amazon forests are resilient enough to cope with [the] intensification of drought regimes,” that’s predicted to accompany future climate and land use change, explained Brando. A better understanding of the recovery capacity of forests is needed in order to know “how much is too much” for Amazon forests, he said.

The Amazon also saw a peak in fire activity during the 2015-16 event, Brando added. “A major concern is that with mega-droughts becoming more common in the near future, fires could burn forested areas that are currently too moist to carry a fire.” Wildfires dump the stored carbon in trees all at once into the atmosphere.

Southeast Asia: forests on fire

By late 2015, parts of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand were without clear sight of the sun, as smoke clouded the sky. Indonesia’s forest fire crisis engulfed the region in a toxic haze which was later shown to have affected 69 million people; over 100,000 likely died as a result.

In total, 2.6 million hectares (more than 10,000 square miles) of land burned. At their peak, daily greenhouse gas emissions from the fires exceeded those of the USA, according to research by Guido van der Werf of the University of Amsterdam.

“What makes Indonesia special [compared with other tropical forest regions] is that a substantial part of the tropical forest is on peatland, and that the human factor is much more important,” van der Werf explained. “If you look at a map with forest loss over the past decades, there is hardly anything untouched.”

Peatlands are especially carbon-rich, accumulating organic material over thousands of years. Draining the peatlands “lowers the water table so the land can be worked on [for agriculture], but it also means the peat starts to decompose,” said van der Werf. “During an El Niño, dry conditions lead to even lower water tables which makes both the forests and peat vulnerable to fire, and humans take advantage of these drought conditions to burn the forests,” in order to clear more croplands, especially for oil palm production.

Fires frequently burn out of control, said David Gaveau of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), destroying larger areas of forest than originally intended. “Once the forest has burned, one would expect the forest to recover,” he said, but an increased risk of subsequent fires “leads many forests to cycles of repeated burns.”

“Such cycles have converted millions of hectares of old-growth and selectively logged forest to fire-prone low vegetation: scrublands and fern fields. Once the land has reached that state, it is nearly impossible for the forest to grow back,” he said.

“The drought-fire mechanism in peatland depends on the [level] of [the] groundwater table [in relation] to the surface, that maintains [the] water content of [the] upper peat layer,” explained Muh Taufik of Wageningen University.

If the groundwater level becomes depleted, this is known as hydrological drought. Taufik’s research has shown that in years of hydrological drought, fires burned ten times the area of forest as in non-drought years. Taufik also found that there has been a general drying trend in Borneo’s groundwater over the last century, making the forests ever more susceptible to fire.

Lan Qie, of Imperial College London, highlights a second major threat to Borneo’s forests: fragmentation. This is a “persistent and progressive threat,” said Qie, whose research has shown that forest fragment edges, adjacent to fields or oil palm plantations, are significant sources of carbon emissions because trees are more likely to die if they are near an edge.

A fragment needs to be larger than 300 hectares (about one square mile) in order for carbon uptake to outweigh carbon loss, Qie and colleagues reported.

But even where intact forests remain, extreme El Niño events can knock those forests off balance. Qie’s study also found that the 1997-98 El Niño, which was more pronounced in the region than the 2015-16 event, caused so much tree mortality due to drought that Borneo’s intact forests tipped from carbon sink to source.

The good news: these forests recovered quickly, suggesting that intact forests have a degree of resilience to even strong droughts, Qie said. Southeast Asia’s Dipterocarp forests have evolved “under a climate regime including El Niño-driven supra-annual droughts,” she added, with periodic, synchronized mass-seeding being an adaptation to these conditions. But, as has been seen in the Amazon, “it is possible that the resilience of the Borneo [carbon] sink may also be challenged in the future,” Qie concluded.

Again, it is a matter of “how much is too much,” but no one currently knows where the tipping point may be, beyond which climate stressed tropical forests won’t be able to recover.

Congo discovery

Until recently, Indonesia’s peatlands were thought to be the largest tropical peatlands in the world. But in January 2017, scientists published confirmation of a discovery: peat forests in the Congo basin covering 145,500 square kilometers (56,177 square miles) knocked Indonesia’s peatlands into second place.

With the Congo peatlands containing 30 billion tons of carbon, the future of tropical African forests is even more critical for the global carbon cycle than scientists realized at the time of the OCO-2 launch in 2014.

The OCO-2 research revealed that tropical African forests did not dry out during the 2015-16 El Niño event: instead, rainfall levels remained normal. But temperatures did rise, driving increased ecosystem respiration, which resulted in heightened CO2emissions.

However, with on-the-ground weather data so limited across tropical Africa, the OCO-2 scientists reported that it was “challenging to verify” the link between temperature and carbon emissions that their remote-sensing data and models identified

This lack of data is also a hindrance when looking ahead. “[T]here are still many uncertainties as to how the climate will change across Central Africa in response to increased greenhouse gas emission,” said Greta Dargie, who led the Congo peatland research, and there is “little consensus amongst the climate models for projections of precipitation patterns across the region.”

The Congo peatlands “appear to be strongly dependent on rainfall for the maintenance of their water tables,” said Dargie, of the University of St. Andrews. A reduction in rainfall, or an increase in evapotranspiration – the movement of water from the soil, up through a tree’s trunk and leaves, into the atmosphere – which could occur if temperatures increase, “could lead to the peatlands becoming drier and therefore result in an increase in carbon dioxide emissions,” she said. But more research is needed to fully understand these mechanisms.

Future feedbacks: could tropical forests collapse?

What can these diverse responses to El Niño tell us about the climate future of tropical forests?

“Predicting the exact responses of tropical forests to climate change is tricky,” said Rowland. “We know they are likely to suffer as a result of rising temperatures and increasing droughts, but […] some of this damage may be partially off-set by increasing CO2 concentrations which will allow them to photosynthesise more.”

However, even without knowing how big the effect will be, “the response of tropical forests to climate change will almost certainly be negative,” Rowland concluded.

If climate change mirrors El Niño conditions “it may result in more carbon dioxide released from tropical forests, and more carbon dioxide remaining in the atmosphere, further warming our planet,” said Liu. A warmer planet could see more frequent extreme El Niño events, resulting in further detrimental interactions between cyclical El Niños, tropical forests, carbon emissions and worsening climate change.

The emissions from El Niño events also have a long-term cumulative effect: “global [atmospheric] CO2 levels have permanently ratchet[ed] up a notch [as a result of] the strong 2015-2016 El Niño event,” Liu explained.

But the magnitude of the most recent El Niño’s carbon emissions may be smaller than one might expect, considering the event’s near record intensity, said Gloor, which is some good news for forest resilience. “Interestingly, and maybe surprisingly, the global atmospheric concentration record does not show any signs that carbon release during the 2015/16 El Niño was anomalously large compared to other El Niño [events] in the past,” once fossil fuel emissions are taken into account, he said.

“Thus, so far, tropical forests seem to be able to cope with the steadily increasing temperatures, even when further enhanced during El Niño phases,” he concluded. However, “the very rapid increase in temperatures is unprecedented. My guess is that if [peak dry season] temperatures move towards 45-50 degrees [Celsius, 113-122 degrees Fahrenheit] then forests may not be able to cope.”

If tropical forests cannot cope, then this globally important carbon store and sink could be at stake.

The possibility of a looming tipping point — when the world’s tropical forests cease to act as a sink, and become a permanent source of carbon — is an active area of research. “Some models project tropical forests will change from a sink to a source for carbon later in this century,” said Keenan, although “there is large disagreement between model projections.”

“[O]ur satellite record isn’t long enough yet to distinguish between” those varying model predictions, Liu explained. To get a better handle on if and when tipping points may occur, “we need a longer data record that [is] sensitive to changes of tropical forest carbon fluxes, such as [that provided by] OCO-2 type satellites, as well as field studies and experiments that can push tropical systems artificially into new conditions,” she said.

Human activity key

Irrespective of the timing of any climate-induced tipping point, human activity changing the face of the world’s tropical forests may ultimately prove to be more critical.

“Currently the biggest threat to tropical forests remains, in my opinion, sadly, still human destruction,” said Gloor.

Taking the impact of deforestation and degradation into account, tropical forest regions are already making a substantial contribution to annual anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. A recent study concluded that, overall, all tropical forest regions are net carbon sources already.

“[G]iven that both fires and peat oxidation are so substantial, it is unlikely that the Indonesian forests as a whole are sinks,” concluded van der Werf. In a drained peatland, “carbon goes out much faster than it went in.”

For the Amazon, Ahlström anticipates that three factors will determine whether the forest will be resilient in the long-term: “future changes in rainfall; the ecosystems’ ability to adapt to new, warmer and more extreme climates that have no present analogue; and deforestation.”

Tropical biologist Tom Lovejoy and climate scientist Carlos Nobre agree that deforestation may help spell the end of the Amazon rainforest. In a recent commentary piece, the two researchers argue that “negative synergies between deforestation, climate change, and widespread use of fire indicate a tipping point for the Amazon system to flip to non-forest ecosystems in eastern, southern and central Amazonia at 20-25 percent deforestation.” Lovejoy previously told Mongabay that he saw the major droughts since 2005 as the “first flickerings” of this process.

Given the large uncertainties surrounding how tropical forests will respond as the climate warms, taking action to keep forests standing and healthy may offer the single best hope for mitigating negative impacts. Annual greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced by up to 30 percent if tropical deforestation was halted, and forests were allowed to recover.

In the meantime, more research is needed “in order to understand the likely future trajectory of the tropical carbon sink” and “directly inform policy” said Keenan. Liu agrees to the need for more tropical data, coupled with the right tools “to piece those data [sets] together into a complete picture” and “improve our understanding of how the earth system works.”

Laurance concludes, “[c]learly, we still have a lot to learn about Earth’s climate, and how it affects life and ecosystems.” The big unknowns: are dangerous climate and deforestation tipping points approaching faster than we can understand and respond to them?

Citation:

Liu, J., Bowman, K. W., Schimel, D. S. et al. (2017) Contrasting carbon cycle responses of the tropical continents to the 2015–2016 El Niño. Science 358: eaam5690

Source Link: https://news.mongabay.com/2018/06/could-el-nino-and-climate-change-spell-the-end-for-tropical-forests/

ASEAN Environment Forest Fire Forestry Global INDONESIA International Mountain Regional RFMRC-SEA SOUTHEAST ASIA

Rain puts out forest fire on Mt Lawu

Rain puts out the forest fire on Mt Lawu

Ganug Nugroho Adi

The Jakarta Post

Karanganyar, Central Java | Thu, June 21, 2018, 04:27 pm

Heavy rain, which fell on Wednesday, has doused the forest fire on Mount Lawu, Karanganyar regency, Central Java.

Climbers, who were on the peak at the time of the fire, have been safely evacuated. However, all trails have been closed until further notice.

“Yes, the fire is out,” said Bambang Djatmiko, the head of the Karanganyar Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD), on Thursday. “The rain that fell on Wednesday afternoon doused it.”

Bambang confirmed that there were about 400 climbers on the mountain when the fire broke out. The BPBD assigned dozens of volunteers from Candi Cetho to fight it and look for climbers.

Around 200 people were evacuated by volunteers from BPBD Karanganyar and Search and Rescue (SAR), while the rest had descended the mountain on their own.

“The last of the 50 climbers have descended,” said Bambang. “They were not trapped but took a rest at the second post, which is far from the hot spot. All of them have returned uninjured.”

Meanwhile, the head of state-run forestry firm Perhutani’s forest functionary office (BPKH) in North Lawu, Edy Saryono, said the hot spot was first detected on Tuesday afternoon on the Argo Tiling peak.

 “Not a single tree was destroyed by the fire. So there’s no need to plant new ones,” added Edy.

He said although the source of the fire was still unknown, he assumed it could have been caused by locals who were making charcoal in the area. (wir/wng)

Source Link: http://www.thejakartapost.com/travel/2018/06/21/rain-puts-out-forest-fire-on-mt-lawu.html

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Myanmar one of several countries in danger of losing its ‘intact forest’ by 2030

Myanmar one of several countries in danger of losing its ‘intact forest’ by 2030

By AFP

On Thursday, 21 June 2018

Earth’s intact forests shrank by an area larger than Austria every year from 2014 to 2016 at a 20 percent faster rate than during the previous decade, scientists said 20 June as the UN unveiled an initiative to harness the “untapped potential” of the land sector to fight climate change.

Myanmar is one of several countries where the forests could be heavily decimated by 2030, according to scientists.

Despite a decades-long effort to halt deforestation, nearly 10 percent of undisturbed forests have been fragmented, degraded or simply chopped down since 2000, according to the analysis of satellite imagery.

Average daily loss over the first 17 years of this century was more than 200 square kilometers (75 square miles).

“Degradation of intact forest represents a global tragedy, as we are systematically destroying a crucial foundation of climate stability,” said Frances Seymour, a senior distinguished fellow at the World Resources Institute (WRI), and a contributor to the research, presented this week at a conference in Oxford.

“Forests are the only safe, natural, proven and affordable infrastructure we have for capturing and storing carbon.”

The findings come as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and five major conservation organizations launched a five-year plan, Nature4Climate, to better leverage land use in reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that drive global warming.

“Thirty-seven percent of what is needed to stay below two degrees Celsius” — the cornerstone goal of the 196-nation Paris Agreement — “can be provided by land,” said Andrew Steer, WRI President, and CEO.

“But only three percent of the public funding for mitigation goes to land and forest issues — that needs to change,” he told AFP.

Beyond climate, the last forest frontiers play a critical role in maintaining biodiversity, weather stability, clean air, and water quality.

Some 500 million people worldwide depend directly on forests for their livelihood.

A future without intact forests?

So-called “intact forest landscapes” — which can include wetlands and natural grass pastures — are defined as areas of at least 500 sq km with no visible evidence in satellite images of large-scale human use.

That means no roads, industrial agriculture, mines, railways, canals or transmission lines.

As of January 2017, there was about 11.6 million sq km of forests worldwide that still fit these criteria. From 2014 to 2016, that area declined by more than 87,000 km2 each year.

“Many countries may lose all their forest wildlands in the next 15 to 20 years,” Peter Potapov, an associate professor at the University of Maryland and lead scientist for the research, told AFP.

On current trends, intact forests will disappear by 2030 in Paraguay, Laos, and Equatorial Guinea, and by 2040 in the Central African Republic, Nicaragua, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Angola.

“There could come a point in the future where no areas in the world qualify as ‘intact’ anymore,” said Tom Evans, director for forest conservation and climate mitigation at the Wildlife Conservation Society.

“It is certainly worrying.”

In tropical countries, the main causes of virgin forest loss are conversion to agriculture and logging. In Canada and the United States, fire is the main culprit, while in Russia and Australia, the destruction has been driven by fires, mining, and energy extraction.

Compared to annual declines during the period 2000-2013, Russia lost, on average, 90 percent more each year from 2014 to 2016.

For Indonesia, the increase was 62 percent, and for Brazil, it was 16 percent.

The new results are based on a worldwide analysis of satellite imagery, built on a study first done in 2008 and repeated in 2013.

– Protected areas –

“The high-resolution data, like the one collected by the Landsat programme, allows us to detect human-caused alteration and fragmentation of forest wildlands,” said Potapov.

Presented at the Intact Forests in the 21st Century conference at Oxford University, the finding will be submitted for peer-reviewed publication, said Potapov, who delivered a keynote to the three-day gathering.

Addressing colleagues from around the world, Potapov also challenged the effectiveness of a global voluntary certification system.

Set up in 1994 and backed by green groups such as the World Wildlife Fund, the self-stated mission of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is to “promote environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the world’s forests.”

Many forest-products carry the FSC label, designed to reassure eco-conscious consumers.

But approximately half of all intact forest landscapes inside FSC-certified concessions were lost from 2000 to 2016 in Gabon and the Republic of Congo, the new data showed.

In Cameroon, about 90 percent of FSC-monitored forest wildlands disappeared.

“FSC is an effective mechanism to fragment and degrade remaining intact forest landscapes, not a tool for their protection,” Potapov said.

National and regional parks have helped to slow the rate of decline.

The chances of forest loss were found to be three times higher outside protected areas than inside them, the researchers reported.

AFP

Source Link: http://www.mizzima.com/news-domestic-international/myanmar-one-several-countries-danger-losing-its-intact-forest’-2030

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BMKG satellites detect 78 hotspots across Sumatera

BMKG satellites detect 78 hotspots across Sumatera

The Jakarta Post

Jakarta | Thu, June 7, 2018, 05:28 pm

The Terra and Aqua satellites have detected 78 hotspots across Sumatra, indicating the possible occurrence of forest fires.

Sukisno, head of the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) in Pekanbaru, Riau, said the satellites detected the most recent hot spot at 6 a.m. local time on Thursday.

Based on the satellites’ images, the hot spots are spread out across Sumatra. Most were detected in Riau, with 23 hot spots, followed by Bengkulu ( 18 ), Aceh ( 10 ), Jambi (four) and West Sumatra (two). Four were detected in Jambi and one Bangka Belitung and the Riau Islands.

“The weather in Riau is cloudy with a possibility of mild rain,” Sukisno said as quoted by tempo.co on Thursday.

The Riau administration previously declared an emergency for forest fires to prevent further flare-ups from affecting the upcoming 2018 Asian Games in Palembang, South Sumatra.

Riau Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD) head Edward Sanger said the emergency status would end on Nov.30.

“The President has instructed the National Disaster Mitigation Agency to prevent any haze disasters caused by forest fires during the Asian Games,” he said. (dpk/ebf)

ASEAN Environment Forest Fire Forestry Global International RFMRC-SEA SOUTHEAST ASIA VIETNAM

Benedictine monks see red over Vietnam forest fires

Benedictine monks see red over Vietnam forest fires

Brothers claim blazes were started deliberately and ask authorities and individuals to respect their dignity

ucanews.com reporter, Hue City
Vietnam, May 29, 2018

Benedictine monks in a central Vietnam province have criticized authorities for ignoring forest fires that they claim were started deliberately.

Brother Stanislas Tran Minh Vong said two fires were found in pine forest around the Benedictine Monastery of Thien An just outside the ancient city of Hue in Thua Thien Hue province on the afternoons of May 22 and 23.

Brother Vong, 81, said 50 monks used water pipes, hoes, shovels, knives and other tools to extinguish the first fire, which broke out about 300 meters from the monastery.

“A group of gangsters shouted at us and tried to prevent us from extinguishing the fire, which was approaching the monastery,” he said. They also told the monks that the forest does not belong to the monastery.

Two security officers from Thuy Bang commune saw the incident but did nothing to stop the flames. “They tried to take away cameras from some monks who were videoing the fire to find its cause,” said Brother Vong.

Brother Vong said the second fire was put out by Benedictines and some soldiers.

Father Louis Gonzaga Dang Hung Tan, head of the monastery, said four fires have started in the area this year. They destroyed five hectares of pine forest planted by the monks decades ago.

“After examining the scene, we confirm that these fires were caused by people. All fires aimed to cause disorder to the monks’ life and religious activities,” Father Tan said.

The priest said some groups of strangers have broken into the monastery and watched the monks’ work for recent months. However, they have never been present at fires and protected the monastery’s properties, he added.

He also accused some individuals and organizations of destroying and confiscating the monks’ land and properties.

The monks have had legal ownership of the monastery and its 107 hectares of pine forest and farmland since 1940.

Since 1975, local authorities have “borrowed” or confiscated land and assigned it to state-run forestry and tourism companies. The monks were allowed to retain only six hectares of land including the monastery.

The monks say they have never transferred the ownership of properties or land to any individual or organization.

“We ask relevant individuals and organizations to respect our dignity and basic human rights by laws,” Father Tan said.

He demanded they stop starting forest fires and preserve the pine forest and the monks’ spiritual values, which help create a clean environment.

The area is now in the dry season lasting from May to September. Five rainwater containers at the monastery are running out and pools used to water orange farms have dried up. Monks have to carry water 10 kilometers to use for their daily activities.

“It is unfair that we are not allowed to use our 49-hectare lake near the monastery,” said Father Tan, referring to a lake confiscated by the government.

Source Link: https://www.ucanews.com/news/benedictine-monks-see-red-over-vietnam-forest-fires/82435

Environment Forest Fire Forestry Global INDONESIA International RFMRC-SEA SOUTHEAST ASIA Uncategorized

Fighting fires on Indonesia’s peatlands

Fighting fires on Indonesia’s peatlands

22 May 2018

The United Nations has proclaimed May 22 the International Day for Biological Diversity to increase understanding and awareness of biodiversity issues. As one of the world’s most valuable ecosystems, peatlands support diverse species, including orangutans. Yet until recently, peatlands were drained and set ablaze for agriculture, producing an ecological catastrophe that sparked the need for change.

It’s now been three years since massive fires ravaged Indonesia in one of the worst environmental disasters of our century.

The blazes in 2015 scorched 2.6 million hectares across the archipelago, and produced toxic haze that blanketed neighboring countries Singapore and Malaysia. Thousands fell ill, and the Indonesian government suffered $16 billion in economic losses – more than double the sum spent on rebuilding Aceh after the 2004 tsunami, according to the World Bank.

What ignited this catastrophe? More importantly, what is being done to prevent it from reoccurring?

Community champions

Beads of sweat trickled down Udeng’s face as he hauled a heavy hose across the field during a practice drill with his fellow firefighters.

The 45-year-old father of four is from Tumbang Nusa, a village located in Indonesia’s Central Kalimantan Province on Borneo that was an epicenter of the 2015 disaster.

“The fires were very bad,” he said. “I’m here to do my part to make sure they don’t happen again.” At the time, Udeng’s kids fell ill with asthma and his wife evacuated them to a neighboring village for almost a month because their home became inhospitable.

Spurred to action, Udeng joined Indonesia’s network of district-level volunteer firefighting brigades, known as “Masyarakat Peduli Api (MPA)”, which are formed by local village heads. Although Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry established a Forest Fire Brigade at the national level called the “Manggala Agni (MA)”, its capacity is frequently overextended given its vast mandate. This makes the volunteers invaluable. Yet many of them lack proper training and equipment given the informal nature of their units.

To remedy this, in May, intensive training was conducted for 66 volunteer firefighters from six of Central Kalimantan’s most fire-prone villages under the UN Environment project “Generating Anticipatory Measures for Better Utilization of Tropical Peatlands (GAMBUT)”, which is funded by USAID and operated by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS).

The training was facilitated by highly experienced South African firefighters from the Working on Fire Program who first came to Indonesia in 2015 to assist with the disaster, and have since been collaborating with the UN Environment project as a key partner to increase knowledge exchange and sharing between the two Southern Hemisphere countries.

“Teaching the technical skills is the easy part,” said Trevor Wilson, Executive Director of Working on Fire. “The biggest challenge is changing the way local people think about fire, so the course stresses 80 per cent fire prevention and only 20 per cent fire suppression, because the best fires are the ones that never happen.”

Peat as tinderboxes

For decades, Indonesia’s smallholder farmers have been using fire to clear land for crops to produce commodities like palm oil, of which Indonesia is now the world’s biggest producer. But intentional fires often spiral out of control, particularly during the annual dry season.

Particularly problematic is when these fires ignite on peatland. Peat is comprised of 90 per cent water and 10 per cent organic matter (decaying plants underwater). Peat fires can thus smolder underground for weeks. They are nearly impossible to put out without heavy rains.

“Peatlands need to remain underwater. If you drain them, you are left with a pile of organic materials like leaves and branches, which are extremely flammable,” said Johan Kieft, Lead Technical Advisor for the UN-REDD Programme in Indonesia, an initiative by UN Environment, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) to support developing countries in their efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

Of the 2.6 million hectares that burned between June-October 2015, 33 per cent occurred on peatlands. When the wildfires broke out, they were exacerbated by an El Niño year that caused an unusually severe dry spell. In normal circumstances, the wildfires would have abated after a few weeks, but in 2015, they raged for months.

Peat and climate change

After the 2015 crisis put a global spotlight on peatlands, Indonesia responded by banning the use of fire in clearing peatlands, establishing a national Peatlands Restoration Agency (BRG), as well as pledging to restore 2 million hectares of peatlands by 2020.

The UN-REDD Programme is working closely with Indonesia to raise awareness about peatlands, given that the country is home to half of the world’s tropical peatlands.

Peat is one of nature’s most effective ways of taking carbon out of the atmosphere and stocking it underground, making it crucial to the fight against climate change. On the flip side, when drained and set ablaze, they can release 10 times more carbon than forest fires.

“By preserving peat, we preserve precious carbon because peat is the largest terrestrial carbon stock in the world,” said Kieft.

For more information contact Leona Liu leona.liu@un.org +66 22882186

Source: https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/fighting-fires-indonesias-peatlands

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Singapore set for third straight haze-free year

Singapore set for third straight haze-free year

PUBLISHED MAY 19, 2018, 5:00 AM SGT

Indonesian minister says there won’t be a repeat of 2015 crisis in 2018, thanks to steps taken

Audrey Tan Environment Correspondent Luke Anthony Tan

Singapore looks set to see a third straight year with no haze, due in part to Indonesia’s sustained efforts at curbing fires and preventing their spread.

Indonesia’s Minister of National Development Planning Bambang Brodjonegoro said yesterday that the 2015 haze crisis would not repeat itself this year.

“In the last few years, including this year, we did not have the haze that happened in 2015,” he said, adding that forestry and peatland management plans have already been implemented. Dr Bambang was speaking at the fifth Singapore Dialogue on Sustainable World Resources held at the Grand Hyatt Singapore hotel. The event was organised by think-tank Singapore Institute of International Affairs.

His statement echoes similar promises made by other Indonesian officials last year and in 2016.

The haze in Singapore is largely caused by winds blowing smoke from forest fires in Indonesia. Many of Indonesia’s pulpwood and oil palm plantations are located on carbon-rich peatlands. When these areas are drained of water for planting, the risk of fire increases.

In 2015, Indonesia’s dry season coincided with the El Nino weather phenomenon, which is linked to warmer and drier weather in this part of the world.

The bad weather exacerbated the forest fires typical of the country’s agro-forestry landscape, and caused the region to suffer the worst haze crisis on record.

Since then, Indonesia has taken significant steps to reduce the occurrence of fires, said Dr Nirarta Samadhi, country director of research organisation World Resources Institute Indonesia.

Speaking to the media on the sidelines of yesterday’s event, Dr Samadhi pointed to three ways that the Indonesian government has demonstrated its commitment to dealing with the haze issue.

The first was the formation in 2016 of the Peatland Restoration Agency, which was tasked with carrying out programmes to restore Indonesia’s carbon-rich peatlands.

To this end, new regulations were rolled out, such as a land swop scheme aiming to get companies off deep peatlands and to move to mineral soils instead, said Dr Samadhi.

The Indonesian government also conducted mapping exercises using Lidar technology to provide data on water levels. If water table levels are too low, peatlands could become more flammable.

Dr Samadhi said these government initiatives have contributed to the clear skies in the region in the past three years.

But other factors not within direct control, such as the weather, played a role too. “Recently, we have also had the advantage of having wetter weather,” Dr Samadhi said.

Sub-national elections in Indonesia could also have contributed to the haze-free skies, as local politicians would have greater incentive to prevent fires, Dr Samadhi said.

Given the role that unpredictable factors play in contributing to the haze, he added, it is hard to predict if South-east Asia could achieve its target of being haze-free by 2020. The target was set by Asean environment ministers after the 2015 crisis.

Ms Zhang Wen, executive director of volunteer group People’s Movement to Stop Haze (PM.Haze), said that for Asean to reach its 2020 target, financial institutions need to play their part.

“We hope local and regional banks can develop clear policies on not financing companies linked to unsustainable practices, such as slash-and-burn techniques, deforestation, and peat drainage. They should also develop clear timelines to help their clients to improve their practices, by adhering to standards set out in eco-certification schemes,” she said.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on May 19, 2018, with the headline ‘S’pore set for third straight haze-free year’.
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Cracking a climate conundrum

Cracking a climate conundrum

By 
Thursday, May 10, 2018

CO2 emissions leveled off between 2014 and 2016. But annual growth of CO2 in the atmosphere rose to more than 50 percent above that of past decades. What explains the contradiction?

In 2015, we earthlings – some 7.5 billion of us – discharged 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air from many tailpipes and smokestacks. That is about the same amount of planet-warming gas belched out in 2014, and the figure remained largely unchanged in 2016.

After a century of exponential growth in the mass of carbon dioxide ejected into the air, the leveling-off of the output caught many observers by surprise. It’s explained partly by widespread substitution of natural gas for coal in electricity production and by expanded use of wind and solar energy.

Although the amount of CO2 ejected into the air leveled off in 2015, the quantity accumulating in the atmosphere did not let up. Rather, it spiked. Indeed, the concentration of the gas increased that year by 3 parts per million (ppm), 50 percent more than in the previous year and the average annual increase of the prior four decades. Researchers hadn’t observed an increase so large since they began systematic measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere back in 1958. The amount of CO2 in the air probably hadn’t surged so much in a single year since at least the end of the last ice age – 10,000 years ago.

The science explaining the seeming dichotomy

A scientific article published in late 2017 explains this apparent paradox. The extra CO2 came from the world’s tropical forests. Beginning at the end of 2014 and lasting 19 months, the strongest El Niño recorded in more than 50 years warmed and dried the tropics – increasing wildfires, slowing tree growth and speeding-up the rotting of dead vegetation – releasing billions of extra tons of CO2 into the air. The authors of that 2017 paper also reported a surprise: Not all tropical forests reacted to the El Niño the same way, a finding the coauthors say could help improve climate models.

The forests most likely rebounded in 2017, and the trend of CO2 growth appears to have returned to its long-term average. But the incident may preview a worrisome mechanism that climate change might permanently trigger, says Junjie Liu, the paper’s lead author and a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Ca. Many climate models project that hot, dry conditions in the tropics, such as those of 2015 and early 2016, will be more common later this century. She says that the results reported in her paper hint that in the future, the tropics “may release more carbon into the atmosphere or absorb less,” speeding the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and further accelerating warming.

Thanks, sea and forests … ‘Nature has done us a fantastic favor.’

For every four tons of CO2 created in the combustion of fossil fuel, only two tons accumulate in the atmosphere. One ton dissolves quickly into sea water and eventually sinks. Forests absorb a second ton, with the trees transforming the gas by photosynthesis into carbon-rich compounds such as sugar and cellulose, some of which becomes permanently sequestered in soil.

“Nature has done us a fantastic favor,” halving the amount of CO2 amassing in the atmosphere, says Scott Denning, of Colorado State University, an atmospheric scientist not involved with the study.

That ocean uptake is likely to continue unhindered in the coming decades, Denning says. The future of forest uptake is less certain. Researchers have tried for years to forecast whether climate change will damage forests and disrupt this critical carbon sequestering process.

Forests in temperate and tropical regions alike take up carbon dioxide and moderate climate change. But many climate scientists say tropical forests – including in the Amazon, the Congo, and Southeast Asia jungles – are the most likely to experience less carbon intake. The consequences, if they do ease off, would be grave. In an average year, primary tropical forests soak up nearly 5 billion tons of CO2, according to figures published in one widely-cited study. Some research suggests that this carbon sink is absorbing less and less, but the evidence is contested. The huge scale and poor infrastructure of tropical forests have bedeviled attempts to determine just how they’re behaving.

The 2017 Science article drew on some of the first measurements from space of atmospheric carbon dioxide. That research almost didn’t happen. On February 24, 2009, NASA launched a Taurus rocket topped by the Orbital Carbon Observatory (OCO), a satellite designed to measure precisely the amount of CO2 above patches of Earth’s surface as small as one-mile square in area. The satellite was to fly over the poles in systematically shifting orbits, passing above the entire planet every 16 days. With a lot of number crunching, researchers had planned to turn the pattern of readings into comprehensive maps of the world’s sources and sinks of the gas.

But the rocket malfunctioned just before nudging the refrigerator-size spacecraft into orbit, and the satellite tumbled into the Indian Ocean. One of the Science paper’s 16 coauthors, David Schimel – a leading expert on the carbon cycle, the circulation of carbon between the atmosphere and reservoirs on Earth – watched NASA’s live feed of the launch in horror.

Schimel had yearned for years for the torrent of data the satellite was to beam down from space. “Just one word” went through his mind when it crashed, he recalls, the ‘Oh sh*t’ cuss that Paul Newman’s and Robert Redford’s characters screamed as they leapt off a cliff in the classic western comedy “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

NASA immediately vowed to build a replacement. Five and a half years later, in mid-2014, the agency successfully launched the satellite’s twin, nicknamed OCO-2. The orbiter has since circled the Earth some 20,000 times, making hundreds of millions of CO2 readings.

After the 2015/2016 El Niño struck, Liu says, she and her collaborators realized that they’d been handed a rare opportunity to observe tropical-forest response to future-like conditions at a spatial scale not previously measurable. They looked at OCO-2 readings and discovered that the El Niño had caused marked changes. In a normal year, CO2 accumulates in tropical trees and soil like water filling a kitchen sink with the tap running. During the El Niño, the sink’s level rose rather than went down, as if a cosmic hand had shut the tap and unplugged the drain. The net result on tropical forests was as if humans beings had increased fossil fuel use by more than 25 percent for a year, releasing an extra 9.5 billion tons CO2 into the atmosphere.

(more…)

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Indonesia to raise efforts to reduce haze

Indonesia to raise efforts to reduce haze

Vows to introduce measures to prevent blazes in fire-prone peatland areas

May 3, 2018

The Indonesian government has pledged to raise its efforts to reduce annual choking haze caused by forest fires and crop burning that blanket not only large parts of Indonesia but also several other Southeast Asian countries.

Declaring 2018 as a “zero smoke year”, Bambang Hendroyono, general secretary of the Environment and Forestry Ministry said the government has come up with a concrete plan to reduce the air pollution.

This involved closer monitoring of peatland areas — especially the activities of farmers — speeding up conservation and forest restoration efforts, wetting arid areas and public awareness campaigns.

“Conservation of peatlands is important to decrease the intensity of forest and peatland fires,” said Hendroyono, at a meeting on peatland management in Banjar, Central Kalimantan.

Preventing peatland — of which Indonesia has 14.9 million hectares — from catching fire is a key element of the government’s plan as it acts as a natural fuel and is very difficult to put out once a fire starts.

According to Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar, a fire has consumed more than 3 million hectares of peatland in the last three years.

“Conservation of peatland is important to decrease the intensity of forest and peatlands fires,” Hendroyono said.

Father Frans Sani Lake, head of the church-run Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation group in the Kalimantan region responded by warning the government that it would take a mammoth effort to significantly reduce fires and that they would remain a big threat, particularly during the dry season.

“Being free from haze is a dream of all people. But, we must be realistic and be prepared,” he told ucanews.com.

The priest said the church has urged Catholics — through homilies, catechism, and announcements in churches — to be wary of activities that trigger forest fires.

Sacred Heart Father Ansel Amo, who heads Merauke Archdiocese’s Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation Commission in Papua, welcomed the government’s move.

“All should respond to this, which serves as a reminder for all of us to protect forests and peatlands, particularly during the dry season,” he said.

Annisa Rahmawati, Senior Forest Campaigner at Greenpeace Southeast Asia said such a commitment to reduce fires must be ongoing.

She said this year there has already been a 20 percent increase on the 2,400 hotspots found last year.

“We hope the government promise is turned into real action,” she told ucanews.com.

Source Link: https://www.ucanews.com/news/indonesia-to-raise-efforts-to-reduce-haze/82201

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Accelerate efforts to address air pollution: WHO to South-East Asian countries

Accelerate efforts to address air pollution: WHO to South-East Asian countries

THE NEWS SCROLL 02 MAY 2018  Last Updated at 6:29 PM

New Delhi, May 2 The WHO today called upon member countries in the South-East Asia region to aggressively address the issue of pollution, saying it accounts for 34 percent of the seven million premature deaths caused by household and ambient air pollution together globally every year.

This comes in the wake of a report of the global health body which puts Delhi and 13 other Indian cities in the list of 20 most-polluted cities in the world in terms of PM2.5 levels in 2016.

Stating that air pollution contributes significantly to non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and lung cancer, Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director of WHO South-East Asia, stressed on the need for investment in effective urban planning with energy-efficient housing and power generation, building safe and affordable public transport systems and improving industry and municipal waste management.

She also sought elimination of the emissions from coal and biomass energy systems, proper management of agricultural waste, forest fires and agro-forestry activities such as charcoal production and support the transition to exclusive use of clean household energy for cooking, heating, and lighting.

Singh drew attention to the example of India’s Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala scheme under which, in the last two years, 37 million women living below the poverty line were provided free LPG connections to support them to switch to clean household energy use. The country targets to reach 80 million households by 2020.

“The availability of clean household energy affects us all and our families and is a key to sustainable development. All countries in the region are making efforts to expand the availability of clean fuels and technologies, however, over 60 percent population do not have clean fuel,” she said.

She said that individuals should also contribute by valuing the environment and adopting behavioral changes such as using public transport or ‘soot-free’ vehicles, using clean, low-or no-emission stoves and fuels for cooking and reducing and disposing of household waste in an environmentally sound manner.

The combined effects of household air pollution and ambient air pollution become increasingly hard to address if not tackled early, the World Health Organization official said. The majority of countries in the region are at early stages of accelerated urbanization and rapid industrialization.

“Hence, air pollution needs to be brought under control with urgent and effective action at the earliest to stand the best chance to prevent the situation from worsening as development proceeds,” Singh said.

Of the 3.8 million deaths caused by household air pollution globally, the region accounts for 1.5 million or 40 percent deaths, and of the 4.2 million global deaths due to ambient (outdoor) air pollution, 1.3 million or 30 percent are reported from the region, according to the latest WHO report.

Delhi and Varanasi are among the 14 Indian cities that figured in a list of 20 most polluted cities in the world in terms of PM2.5 levels in 2016, according to a data released by the WHO.

The WHO data also said that nine out of 10 people in the world breathe air containing high levels of pollutants.

Other Indian cities that registered very high levels of PM2.5 pollutants were Kanpur, Faridabad, Gaya, Patna, Agra, Muzaffarpur, Srinagar, Gurgaon, Jaipur, Patiala and Jodhpur followed by Ali Subah Al-Salem in Kuwait and a few cities in China and Mongolia.

In terms of PM10 levels, 13 cities in India figured among the 20 most-polluted cities of the world in 2016.

Source Link: https://www.outlookindia.com/newsscroll/accelerate-efforts-to-address-air-pollution-who-to-southeast-asian-countries/1299781