HOLY GREEN PLAN! THE VATICAN GETS VIRTUOUS ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT
The new array of solar panels lining the Paul VI Audience Hall (a.k.a. Nervi Hall) in the State of the Vatican City have been switched on, two months after construction began on replacing the 40-year-old roof tiles. The 2,400 panels covering 5,000 square metres will provide the hall and surrounding buildings with 300,000 kilowatt-hours a year of electricity – enough to save more than 70 tonnes of oil and 200 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year.
Aiming to generate 20 per cent of its energy needs from renewables by 2020 (in line with European Union targets), the Holy See may put solar panels on other buildings (although not on any significant historical sites, such as St. Peter’s Basilica). Plans are under way for a solar-power plant on Vatican-owned land north of Rome, which would feed electricity into the Italian grid.
Pope Benedict XVI – dubbed by some “the green pope” – stated on World Youth Day this summer in Australia that humanity needs to stop “squandering the world’s mineral and ocean resources to fuel [our] insatiable consumption.” He also has suggested that Catholics cut down on carbon use for Lent and listed “polluting the environment” among a suite of seven new “social sins.”
Work has recently begun on the Vatican Climate Forest, with more than 100,000 willow, oak, poplar and fruit trees to be planted on 240 hectares of land in Hungary. The forest is intended to offset the more than 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide that the Vatican City emits annually – potentially making it the world’s first carbon-neutral sovereign state.
LAYERED-OVER LANDFILLS
Decomposing waste in landfill sites is a major source of carbon dioxide and methane emissions. But covering dumps with a layer of soil and then putting trees, shrubs and other plants on top – called phytocapping – could be a good solution. It would not only trap the greenhouse gases inside, but also create new habitats and corridors for local wildlife, according to a study in the January, 2009, issue of the International Journal of Environmental Technology and Management.
Previous attempts in the U.S. to put caps over landfill sites with clay – to prevent the rubbish from being rained on (and therefore rotting) – were less effective because in hot and dry areas the clay would crack, letting rain in and hence greenhouse gases out into the atmosphere.
But scientists from Central Queensland University found that covering an Australian landfill site with a layer of soil more than a metre thick and planting it with acacias, figs and eucalyptus trees reduced methane emissions by four to five times compared with an uncapped site. They tried out different thicknesses of soil and 19 different tree species to see which would best prevent water from reaching the waste.
Phytocaps could work in Canada as well, says the study’s lead author, Kartik Venkatraman of Central Queensland University.
“There have been 11 successful trials in the U.S. and Certainly there is a possibility for this capping system to be promoted in Canada,” he said via e-mail.
But could heavy metals or toxic chemicals from the waste be absorbed by the plants and passed on through the food chain? Not in this study, at least.
Mr. Venkatraman found all but one tree species had heavy-metal concentrations “well below the threshold limit” in their leaves. Only one – the small-leaved cheese tree – had high cobalt levels, so it will not be used in the future.
CAN’T SEE THE TREES FOR THE DEFORESTATION
Deforestation is the hot topic at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Poznan, Poland, this week.
The loss of trees accounts for 20 to 25 per cent of greenhouse-gas emissions worldwide – more than oil-fuelled transportation – because of the amount of carbon dioxide the forests stop removing and the exposure of soil, which then releases stored carbon into the atmosphere.
Discussion for the post-Kyoto treaty, to be signed in December, 2009, centres around the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) program in developing countries.
The goal is to create a market in which developed countries could offset emissions with carbon credits from other countries, which would protect their forests in return. In essence, rich countries would pay poorer ones not to cut their trees down.
But indigenous groups staged a protest against REDD on Tuesday, accusing Canada, the U.S., Australia and New Zealand of having a clause deleted that would have recognized the land rights of indigenous groups, which they say could be exploited under the program.
“Our forests are being negotiated away for REDD projects, [which could] cause poverty, forced displacement and the destruction of our cultures,” said Marcial Arias of the Kuna People of Panama via e-mail. He was in Poland as a policy adviser from the International Alliance of the Indigenous Peoples and Tribal Peoples of the Tropical Forests.
The Friends of the Earth International has also released a report to state their concerns. REDD would give developed countries “permits to pollute” and it would also result in zero overall decreases in global emissions, FOE’s International Climate Campaign Co-ordinator, Joseph Zacune, said in Poznan.
“These proposals would create the climate regime’s largest-ever loophole,” he says.
And because there is no clear definition yet of what constitutes a “forest,” Mr. Zacune says, plantations could count. So diverse, virgin rain forests could be cut down and replaced with monocultures, which often store only 20 per cent of the carbon that a virgin forest does. “This may do more harm than good.”
But Louis Verchot, a member of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a chief scientist with the Centre for International Forestry Research, disagrees.
REDD is still the best idea, he says, because it could be effectively “linked with sustainable development.”