How will humanity manage peak oil and climate change impacts and promote an ordered and gradual transition to low carbon economies?

The strong environmental effects of greenhouse gas emissions derived from oil use and the negative socio-economic consequences of future oil scarcity make it urgent to shift to alternative affordable energy sources. A recent assessment of the International Energy Agency, an OECD prestigious institution, alerts that oil shortage and increased energy costs can easily be an immediate reality after the current financial crisis if massive and strategic investments in oil industry are not rapidly and massively implemented.

Multiple economic, scientific, technological and political pathways should be implemented to achieve this global energy transition. States should empower their national strategies to improve the efficiency in energy generation, transmission and consumption and thus reduce progressively carbon emissions. States should also facilitate the massive deployment of renewable energies and public transport, promote the progressive electrification of the car industry, and globally shift to sustainable strategies in many other economic sectors. At the international level, governments should rapidly promote multilateral and bilateral cooperative agreements on energy and climate policies. In addition, states might promote the creation of a United Nations international programme to facilitate and coordinate a world-wide ordered and non-traumatic transition to low-carbon and energy-efficient economie. This UN international programme could develop or facilitate multilateral regulatory agreements to avoid the emergence of speculative dynamics and volatility on oil prices that ultimately damage economic stability and increase ongoing global food-security crisis. Finally, I advocate for a much greater scientific effort urgently placed on the interactions between peak oil, climate change and global society change. The scale, urgency and severity of peak oil and climate change mean that no action is too small to matter, too large to contemplate, or too soon to begin. There is not much time left.

How to deal with the uncertainties associated with Earth system research, especially policy-relevant areas?

In addition to climate change uncertainties, we are still lack of knowledge about interactions of land-atmosphere, Atmosphere-sea, aerosol-climate, chemistry-climate, and more importantly human-environment relationships.

How can we get past the debates between natural and anthropogenic causes of global changes, and shift our attention towards reducing and dealing with the impacts of these changes?

How to minimize the natural vs anthropogenic controversy on global changes/warming issues? It seems that there is no more scientific doubts that climate changes are moving the earth system to a warmer period. It seems that the actual controversy on how much is natural and how much is human related is a worthless discussion in many senses. We have to focus on how to diminish the impacts rather than finding which is the guilty mechanism or process. Whatever the solutions, they have to be implemented in the human dimension first.

How to establish balanced use of agricultural land and better ecological function?

Agricultural land occupies about 10% of total land area, pastures not included. Its ecological influence (nutrient cycles, carbon storage, energy, water, biodiversity) is considerably larger. The sector is growing both in extent and intensity. The world needs good ecological function of this sector.

The main task for agriculture is to produce food for mankind. The present main policy is that agricultural production like other “industries” shall be governed by market forces, in reality price competition on a global scale (within a very weak concept “Good Agricultural Practice).

However, there is a contradiction. Factors favouring market competitiveness are specialization and adaptability ( we could say shortsightedness). Factors favouring ecological function are diversity and longterm consideration, exactly the opposite. There are environmental programs, but they are not accepted world wide. They are criticized for distorting competitiveness in both directions.

With a few sacrifices in economy and production (if any in the long term) agriculture could develop much better ecological function even with present knowledge and technology (Background: www.greengard.se/Eco-efficiency.htm . But for the farm manager such measures compromise shortterm competitiveness. He should not be expected to disobey the rules the society has given him.

The research task (economic/political/agronomic) is to create a background for a framework including “ecological values” as drivers for development. Let market economy work also on the ecological side. It should go beyond present attempts with carbon trading etc, and include for instance nutrient and water efficiency, diversity and landscape function.

Göte Bertilsson, Agr system consultant, Sweden

What are the criteria for assessing the effectiveness of integrated conservation and development practices?

The paradigm shift in conservation and the commitment of international organizations to the goals of sustainable development gave birth to integrated conservation and development practices (ICDP). Naughton-treves et al. (2005) in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources concludes that ICDPs have had limited success in improvement of social welfare and biodiversity conservation. There is confusion in operationalising the multiple objectives, ambiguous mandates, and assessing the effectiveness of parks and reserves.

Contribution of conservation areas to development goals and poverty reduction is a complex endeavor and there is no set of conservation strategies for different regions and sub-regions of the world considering the fundamental differences between their institutional and historical context (Naughton-Treves et al. 2005). Combination of conservation and development without any change in market has an inherent contradiction and seeking a win-win situation might be elusive. Either conservation and development objectives should be separated (Berkes 2004) or there should be trade-offs between the two (Garnett et al. 2007) and the compromise would be development projects that minimize environmental degradation and conservation projects that minimize economic loss (Borgerhoff Mulder and Coppolillo 2005). Holland (2005) suggests that the challenge for ICDPs is shifted from “Parks vs people” to “park insiders vs outsiders” (Naughton-Treves et al. 2005).

Foot Note: Frank and Blomley (2004) describe ICDPs as “…approaches to the management and conservation of natural resources in areas of significant biodiversity value that aim to reconcile the biodiversity conservation and socio-economic development interests of multiple stakeholders at local, regional, national and international levels”.

How can we undo the fossil fuel CO2? (A longer version: what are the most promising and sustainable strategies in carbon management and sequestration?

Given the slowness of transition towards a low-carbon economy, we are bound for a high CO2 world. It is most likely that we will have to sequester CO2 and manage the carbon pools on land and in the ocean to keep the atmospheric CO2 below a dangerous level. The unintended consequences of our ‘geophysical experiment’ (Roger Revelle) will have to be undone by intended actions that are informed by the best science. Earth system research is in a unique position to answer such a question that involves an extremely large number of disciplines and their interaction with the human dimension.

What are the most effective and cost-efficient ways to influence local land use decision-making in order to achieve sustainable outcomes?

A better understanding of the factors driving local land use decision-making is crucial to formulate well-targeted policies and interventions that provide the right incentives for land users to achieve socially desired outcomes. Such interventions should have long-term time horizons and concurrently maintain or increase the natural resource base, safeguard or improve local livelihoods, and attain the necessary benefits for man and nature at minimum costs.

How can local and regional environmental changes be scaled accurately and effectively to enhance the assessment of global changes, and vice-versa? How can we enhance the applicability of global predictions of biodiversity loss, water scarcity, climate change etc. to local and regional decision-making?

Environmental change occurs at varying temporal and spatial scales. Therefore it is imperative we understand how to utilize existing models and scientific understanding to create realistic predictions of biophysical thresholds and environmental consequences that governments and communities can utilize and comprehend. Furthermore, we need to understand how to relate the mitigation, adaptation, and conservation policies of a given locality to the Earth system. Knowledge of how to effectively scale human decisions and environmental change will significantly aid our ability in generating tangible action towards cooperative solutions.

Can the environmental impacts of inter-basin transfers be adequately predicted and mitigated?

For large parts of the human population water scarcity is a serious problem. Increased hydrological variability as a result of climate change will exacerbate the problem. As a result, the pressure to use water more efficiently and ultimately to find ways of redistributing resources from areas of plenty to areas of stress increases. There are many large inter-basin transfers around the world, notably in Australia, Canada, China, India and the United States, Central Asia. Many more inter-basin transfer schemes are under consideration. Inter-basin transfers are often large and expensive, involving major infrastructure and in some cases significant use of energy for pumping. Transfers will affect existing river flows and water quality and can also have significant impacts on aquatic ecosystems.

What are the possible policies for meeting the problems of climate change, overfishing, and depletion of mineral resources? What is the effectiveness of tradeable permits and taxes, how can they deal with tradeoffs over time, and especially how are they compatible with the need for economic growth among the poorer nations who are, at the same time, contributing to the problems? What is the scope for directed technological change?

Recognizing the importance of challenges to the Earth system is only the beginning. We must ask how to meet them. This requires a great deepening of our knowledge of economic and social systems and of changes in values to accompany the changes in needs.