Monthly Archives: December 2022

“Joy to the world!” Christmas is one of the biggest holiday seasons, and Christmas Tree is an important symbol and component of the festive season. However, Christmas trees come with an environmental cost that has become a topic of discussion. With the holiday season right around the corner, it is time to reconsider the relationship between Christmas trees and their environmental impact.

While one might worry about chopping down millions of trees yearly, a real Christmas tree may be more sustainable than an artificial one. Trees can be harvested from renewable energy sources in ways that they are replanted, providing lots of environmental, conservation and natural benefits.

Amongst many, one of the many benefits is that trees absorb carbon dioxide, which is a primary contributor to global. According to National Christmas Tree Association (NCTA), it can take at least seven years to grow a Christmas tree to its typical height of between six and seven feet. The Real Christmas trees have an average carbon footprint of nearly 3.5kg of CO2 if disposed of via wood chipper or bonfire.

However, if they end up in landfills, the carbon footprint increases four-fold, equivalent to roughly 16kg of CO2. In contrast to the above statistics, there has been a voice against real Christmas trees and the use of artificial ones to reduce the carbon footprint. However, if we discard the artificial trees, the same would release nearly 40kg of CO2. The above would mean that it would take almost 12 years for a fake tree to become eco-friendly.

A real Christmas tree is biodegradable and has no chemical impacts on its environment. Additionally, the composed Christmas trees can be used for fertilization the following year. In contrast, artificial Christmas trees are made of petroleum-based plastics and metals, commonly made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), adding pressure on landfills and disposal at the end of their life cycle. Another aspect of plastic Christmas tree usage is that it is manufactured in developing nations and transported to developed nations, thus adding to the already increasing carbon footprint.

Though Christmas trees have become an indelible part of our consumer culture, roughly 33-36 million Christmas trees are sold within the US, while nearly 50- 60 million in European nations, yet a significant portion of Christmas trees are not used for decorations.

So, what can we do, and how can we ensure that the festive purchase this year is as environmentally-friendly as possible? Some of the ways to enjoy an eco-friendly Christmas are:

· Buy a second-had tree (artificial tree)

· Decorate a living outside tree

· Purchase a live potted tree

· Reusing trunk as firewood

· Allow customization of the existing tree

· Buy local and support local vendors and reduce transportation carbon footprint

The original meaning and importance of the Christmas tree are to provide hope for people during freezing winters worldwide. With commercialization, the rise of mass production and contemporary consumerism has distorted the Christmas tree’s true meaning. Furthermore, the massive demand has also devastated the current ecosystem. There have been debates surrounding original vs fake Christmas trees and their environmental impact, which is hugely complex. With Christmas just around the corner, it is essential to reflect on how we can protect our environment and be more environmentally conscious and environmentally as we make our purchases during our holidays.

How unsustainably sustainable has the World Cup been?

The 2022 FIFA World Cup has delivered on the promise of an exciting tournament with upsets and nail-biting finishes. However, World Cup organizers promised that the soccer tournament in Qatar would be “the first carbon-neutral FIFA World Cup in history.”

Qatar’s Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy (SCDL), the entity that manages the tournament, and the world soccer governing body, FIFA, predicted in a February 2021 report that the carbon emissions of the FIFA World Cup 2022 would be about 3.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. The five notable objectives stated in the plan for a sustainable FIFA 2022 world cup start with the following:

· Construction and operation of the World Cup sites to limit environmental impacts while building local

· Offsetting all GHG emissions produced for and during the tournament

· Minimizing air pollution, landfill, and water use

· Advancing low-carbon solutions, promoting waste management

· Access to cleaner technologies

At the time of FIFA world cup was awarded to Qatar, the organizers, i.e., the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy (SC), made some calculations that were prepared by the Swiss carbon management firm South Pole, set the total emissions for the World Cup at 3.6 million metric tons. However, the independent researchers marked the figure as an undercount and came up with roughly six million tons, equivalent to a year’s worth of emissions from 750,000 US homes. The researchers further marked the FIFA world-cup event as “the most emissive ever.”

One of the most significant flaws in estimating the emission levels is underestimating the emissions associated with its stadium building. The host nation built seven new stadiums to accommodate the World Cup’s 64 matches, beginning on November 20, 2022, and finals on December 18 2022, which will cause massive CO2 emission levels adding to the already scorching heat waves faced by the nation.

Another flaw in calculating the emission levels disclosed by the Global Carbon Council (GCC) is the number of carbon credits purchased from three renewable energy projects in Turkey and Serbia, fewer than 350,000 tons of CO2 equivalent. The above holds onto the tournament’s claim of being carbon-neutral.

Another major flaw is the use of transport during the FIFA world cup. Flying by air is hugely carbon intensive, thus making the fan and other flights the largest source of emissions during sporting events.

Water is another concerning factor for the desert nation due to the scarce water supply to the country. Every pitch where the match is played requires around 10,000 litres (2,641 gallons) of desalinated water daily. The above is specifically significant since most of Qatar’s freshwater comes from desalination plants produced by an energy-intensive process involving massive fossil fuel usage.

Additionally, the plants release a toxic salty, hot brine which is highly toxic to marine life in our oceans.

With nearly 60% of waste generated calculated to be recycled and the remaining 40% turned into energy, burning waste for energy release generates massive GHG emissions, making waste another flaw in the overall climate sustainability claims.

Having discussed the potential flaws in the overall sustainable strategy of the host nation as pointed out by critics globally, the desert nation is putting up its best foot forward and attempting massively to be eco-friendly and adopt sustainable measures at every possible level.

Among many options to reduce carbon emissions are the need to adopt direct air capture, an expensive new technology that injects greenhouse gases underground. Lastly, a genuinely green World Cup would mean that individual footballers and other sports leaders speak and discuss climate action, thus, leading by example and implementing it in their lives.

With all of the above, it is a daunting task to ensure a sustainable FIFA world cup 2026, when carbon emissions will rise at unprecedented levels since the tournament will expand massively. From 32 nations playing, the tournament will include 48 teams and take place across an entire continent.

We all could hope things soon start to look different if FIFA sets the pace for climate action. “Football is a beautiful game; it is about fair play, so FIFA must lead by example, showcase a fair play by adopting climate sustainability, and that they want the beautiful game not to have an ugly underbelly.“

Politicians, economists and some natural scientists tend to assume that the climate tipping points in the Earth system, like the loss of the Amazon rainforest or the West Antarctic ice sheet and many such points, are of low probability and are little understood. However, evidence is mounting that these events could be more likely, have high impacts on the planet’s ecosystem and are interconnected across different biophysical systems, potentially committing long-term irreversible changes worldwide.

The analysis of the tipping points helps to identify that we are in a state of “climate emergency” and further strengthens the chorus of calls for urgent climate action worldwide. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) introduced the idea of tipping points nearly two decades ago. Such ‘large-scale discontinuities’ in the climate system were possible only if global warming exceeded five degrees Celcius above pre-industrial levels.

Furthermore, the information summarized in the recent IPCC Special Reports (published in 2018 and September 2019) suggested that tipping points could be exceeded even when the temperature rise is between 1 and 2 °C of warming.

The term “climate tipping points” has become a core concept of discussions about climate change science and is used as a metaphor for abrupt, irreversible, and dangerous climate change by climate scientists and the news media. The IPCC described the concept as “once a given climate threshold is reached, it can cause life on Earth to face prolonged, irreversible changes“.

A tipping point in the climate system is a critical threshold which, if crossed, results in a major, and often irreversible, change in the states of the system.

The IPCC has identified several tipping points in climate change that are critical thresholds in a system that, if crossed, could result in irreversible consequences. Climate tipping points are critical thresholds that, when crossed, push a natural system into an entirely different state, and result in possibly irreversible, catastrophic consequences — including even greater warming — for Earth.

A tipping point is where the threshold for temperatures is crossed, leading to an irreversible shift in the climate system, even though global warming is ending. Tipping points also require self-reinforcing feedback and result in changes to a climate system that are not irreversible over the human timescale. However, crossing the tipping points risks irreversibly perturbing the natural systems which have kept Earth’s climate relatively stable over thousands of years.

From melting the Greenland Ice Sheet to the Labrador Sea’s convection melt and the Amazon rainforest’s disappearance, climate thresholds throw Earth’s systems into catastrophic tailspins. In climatology: “a tipping point is a point where more minor changes become large enough to produce a larger, critical shift, one that may be sudden, irreversible, and result in cascading effects“.

Scientists explain that such change happens on longer timescales, and the limits of computational power make it impossible to accurately depict every climate system’s tipping points or how they interact. The tipping points were considered probable only when global warming exceeded five degrees Celcius above pre-industrial levels.

Assessments have been done in the past, like those of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; the sixth assessment report was released in three parts in 2021 and 2022, suggested most of the main tipping points would be reached if the planet warmed beyond 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, giving humanity more time to develop mitigation and adaptation strategies.

Abrupt changes in the tipping points are essential because they could dominate climate change impacts far beyond their effect on the way global warming changes relative to emissions.

Since the impacts are inevitable, we must prioritize and ramp up climate mitigation and adaptation. On the mitigation front, it means working in all, and one can limit global warming and not exceed the 1.5-degree celsius tipping point. The same requires transformative global shifts by the developed countries. On the adaptation front, efforts will mean actively preparing for climate impacts coming down the pike and prioritizing resources for already-vulnerable communities.

Concluding, continued GHG emissions will worsen climate change, and future changes will include a warm and more acidic ocean, a warm atmosphere, sea level rise, and drastic changes in precipitation patterns. The Earth is likely no longer in a safe climate since temperatures exceed the warming limit by approximately one-degree celsius. Therefore, even the UN Paris Agreement’s target of keeping global warming well below two-degree celsius and preferably 1.5 degrees celsius might fall short of mitigating severe climate change.

However, to even have a 50% chance to limit global warming by 1.5 °C and to avoid crossing any climate tipping points, GHG emissions must be cut in half by 2030 and eliminated by 2050.

Ecosystem services are the myriad benefits humans derive from their natural surroundings and healthy ecosystems. Ecosystem services are the benefits of ecosystems, which help make human life possible and worthwhile. Regulated services are the benefits provided by ecosystem processes that moderate natural phenomena. Despite an estimated value of $125 trillion, these assets are not adequately accounted for in the political and economic policy. The same explains that there is insufficient investment in the protection and management of such services.

A regulating service is classified as any benefit obtained through natural processes and the functioning of an ecosystem. Regulating services are the benefits that ecosystems provide to the regulation of our environment: protection of coastlines, prevent erosion, purification of water, and storage of carbon. Provisioning services are characterized by humans’ ability to extract products from ecosystems, like food, water, and resources, including timber, petroleum, genetic resources, and medicines.

Cultural services comprise the non-material benefits humans can derive from ecosystems. Such services are non-material benefits derived from nature–recreation, beauty, and mental, intellectual, and cultural benefits. A cultural service is a non-material benefit which promotes human development and cultural progress, including how ecosystems are instrumental to local, national, and global cultures; building knowledge and disseminating ideas; creations that arise through interactions with nature (music, art, architecture); and recreation.

Some primary examples of ecosystem services include products like food and water, regulation of flooding, soil erosion, disease outbreaks, and non-material benefits like recreation and mental benefits from natural areas. Although nature’s value to humans has been recognized for some time, the concept of ecosystem services has been developed over recent years to describe these different benefits. Ecosystems–living elements that interact with one another and with their nonliving surroundings–provide benefits, or services, to the world.

Ecosystems are sources of food, water, medicines, timber, and biofuels, along with conditions that allow those resources to grow. Wetlands provide many valuable ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration, water cleaning, plant and animal habitat, and reducing storm damage and flooding to neighbouring areas. In anticipation of widespread ecosystem changes and potential losses or changes to ecosystem service provision or distribution, landowners and managers may want to focus on strengthening the resilience and adaptive capacities of forests and prairies so that these landscapes continue providing vital benefits in the future.

There is an increase in forest loss worldwide, and there have been significant challenges facing efforts to safeguard forests and the ecosystem services they provide for sustainable development. The global community appears to be arriving at a critical turning point, with several recent developments pointing to a positive trajectory of progress. These developments include:

· New Policy Signals

Global policy drivers such as Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement—must play a role in achieving global development and climate change mitigation goals, sending a powerful political signal that the global community is committed to forest conservation, along with offering pathways for the provision of finance to facilitate the objective.

Furthermore, Global and national commitments for Forest Restoration are increasing yearly to restore 150 million hectares of degraded and deforested land by 2020 and nearly 350 million hectares by 2030. Presently, 160.2 million hectares have been pledged for restoration. However, achieving the 350 million hectare goal will generate about US$170 billion per year in net forest ecosystem service benefits in watershed protection, improved crop yields, and enhanced provision of forest products.

· Growing Investments

The Green Climate Fund is poised to be a significant new source of public REDD+ finance, having pledged $500M in October 2017 to pay for REDD+ offsets. Additionally, The World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility is one of the most extensive public-sector REDD+ financing programs globally that aims at moving closer to formally contracting offsets from its member countries.

Nearly US$1 billion in voluntary “forest carbon market” offset transactions have been reported since Forest Trends’ Ecosystem Marketplace first started collecting this data in 2009.

· Corporate Commitments

Corporate commitments to reduce emissions and deforestation are proliferating. They would help create new demands for forest carbon offsets and concerted action aimed at reducing deforestation associated with commodity production, which could lead to positive outcomes for securing forest ecosystem services.

· Advances in Technology

Rapid technological improvement enables frequent, accurate, cost-effective monitoring of forest cover change worldwide. The above will allow an unprecedented level of awareness concerning real-time threats to forests and provides governments with the tools needed to enforce laws and policies to conserve forests and ecosystem services.

CATEGORIES OF ECOSYSTEM SERVICES

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, published in 2005, divided ecosystem services into four categories:

a. Provisioning services (the supply of goods) of direct benefit to people: These are often with a clear monetary value, like timber from forests, medicinal plants, and fish from oceans, rivers and lakes.

b. Regulating services (the range of functions carried out) by ecosystems: are often of great value but not monetary value in conventional markets. They include regulating climate by storing carbon and controlling local rainfall, removing pollutants by filtering air and water and protecting from disasters such as landslides and coastal storms.

c. Cultural services: These are the services that are not providing direct material benefits but contribute to the broad needs and desires of society. These include the spiritual value attached to particular ecosystems and are not directly beneficial to people but essential to the functioning of ecosystems.

Concluding, ecosystem services are complex in nature of any ecosystem; humans are generally assumed to derive benefits from the combinations of such services. Multiple services can usually be combined, and where benefits of targeted goals are assured, ancillary benefits can be provided too: a single forest can provide habitats for other organisms and recreation to humans, all of which are ecosystem services.