Ocean Nourishment: Sacrificing the Marine Environment for Profits and the Need for SBSTTA13 to Take a Stand

Ocean Nourishment:
Sacrificing the Marine Environment for Profits
and the Need for SBSTTA 13 to Take a Stand

Global warming is undoubtedly the defining environmental problem today and in the near future. The unfolding catastrophes and dangers associated with global warming has made efforts at finding solutions and mitigating the problem a primary priority. However, there are solutions that help to fix the problem and there are purported ones that only make the situation worse. Ocean nourishment belongs to the latter category.

Late last year, the Sulu Sea in the Philippines became the subject of global attention when it was learned that an Australian company, the Ocean Nourishment Corporation (ONC), was preparing to dump hundreds of tons of urea fertilizers in those waters as part of its patented carbon sequestration technology called ocean nourishment. Ocean nourishment involves the release of urea or nitrogen fertilizers into seawaters to induce massive growths of phytoplanktons that could absorb atmospheric carbon doxide before trapping them into deep ocean. This carbon sequestration technology supposedly would lessen carbon dioxide presence in the atmosphere and therefore help reduce global warming.

Ocean nourishment has been roundly criticized by scientists and environmentalists as an unproven and environmentally hazardous technology. It has not been shown that carbon can be sequestered effectively and permanently in this manner. On the contrary, there is scientific concern that the opposite may happen, that the massive concentrations of phytoplankton will increase carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a result of increased numbers of carbon-respiring plankton predators. Moreover, large phytoplankton concentrations will likely cause major ecological imbalances such as harmful algal blooms that are destructive to marine life and fisheries. Not only will marine biodiversity be adversely affected by fertilization but local economies dependent on fisheries would suffer tremendously. The Sulu Sea is an especially vulnerable area since it consists of major fishing grounds, is host to one of the richest marine biodiversity on earth and is where the UNESCO world heritage site, the Tubbataha Reef, is located.

If not for the ruckus raised by Philippine environmentalists and civil society organizations, ONC's Sulu Sea fertilization plan would have been allowed by government to be carried out despite the absence of environmental impact assessment and public consultations. In fact, there was already initial government approval for the project but protests forced government to step back. Since then, scientists, local and national government officials, and communities have all expressed opposition to ocean nourishment and questioned ONC's work in the Philippines. Ocean nourishment has been put on hold in the Philippines.

What has become clear though is that ocean nourishment is no solution to global warming but is really another attempt to exploit the global warming problem by getting into the lucrative carbon trading market. ONC has made no secret of its plan to sell its technology on the carbon market. Such barefaced attampts to sacrifice the environment for profits in the name of mitigating global warming must be opposed and denounced. It is not only the Sulu Sea that's being threatened but there are also other ocean fertilization activities and plans in other parts of the world's seas.

The London Convention on Marine Dumping has expressed grave concern over the ecological risk of ocean fertilization and sounded the need for oversight on these technologies due to their large-scale impacts on the environment. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has noted that “ocean fertilization remains largely speculative, and many environmental side effects have yet to be assessed”. We believe the 13th SBSTTA, which has mandate on marine biodiversity issues, is in a position to lend its voice to growing global concerns about the impact of ocean nourishment to marine biodiversity. We therefore call on the SBSTTA to make recommendations for the COP to adopt precautionary approach measures on ocean nourishment initiatives, limiting any experiments on this technology to laboratory conditions whilst scientific issues are debated and resolved. Moreover, SBSTTA can make similar recommendation towards international oversight mechanisms to regulate such technologies including other so-called geo-engineering initiatives whether they take place in national and international territories due to their possible wider and long-term global impact. We hope and believe that the 13th SBSTTA can contribute towards this goal of protecting the world's biodiversity.

13th SBSTTA, 19 February 2008

SEARICE RECOMMENDATIONS on BIODIVERSITY AND CLIMATE CHANGE

SEARICE RECOMMENDATIONS on BIODIVERSITY AND CLIMATE CHANGE
13th Meeting of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice
18 February – 22 February, 2008, Rome, Italy


The SOUTHEAST ASIA REGIONAL INITIATIVES FOR COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT (SEARICE), a regional Non-governmental Organization working with farmers and farming communities in the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Lao PDR and Bhutan, working on the promotion and strengthening of farmer-led conservation and sustainable utilization of agro-biodiversity at the field level and in local and national policy actions, welcomes the report on Biodiversity and Climate Change identifying options for mutually supportive activities for the Secretariats of the Rio Conventions and for parties and relevant organizations.

SEARICE raises the following observations and recommendations that the Parties present should consider to recommend that the Conference of the Parties to the Convenion on Biological Diversity at its ninth meeting:

1. On Ocean Nourishment and Fertilization, SEARICE welcomes and commends interventions from various Parties to the 13th Meeting of the SBSTTA which have expressed grave concern on ocean nourishment and geo-engineering, by taking a stand in recommending the adoption of precautionary approach measures and the establishment of an Ad-Hoc Technical Expert Working Group on this.

We likewise put emphasis to the concerns raised during the London Convention on Marine Dumping, where Parties to that Convention have already expressed grave concern over the ecological risks of ocean fertilization and expressed the need for oversight on these technologies due to their large-scale impact on the environment, and, in addition, on its potential impact on local communities that rely on resources in target areas of these technologies.

2. SEARICE also recommends for the Parties to take the precautionary approach on large-scale climate-change mitigation activities and endeavors, especially large-scale agrofuels production, that will in large part compromise health, food security, food safety, and the agricultural biodiversity being conserved and utilized sustainably by farmers, local communites and indigenous peoples.

3. It is important that Parties recommend engagement with and active involvement of farmers, local communities and indigenous peoples on concerns regarding climate change, in consideration of the crucial role that they play on adaptation and adaptability given their dynamic practices of conserving, adapting, and enhancing in-situ agro-biodiversity, which create resiliency in withstanding impacts of climate change.

In addition, the Parties, in line with a stronger collaboration with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), should be encouraged to invite researches highlighting and involving local communities adaptation mechanisms and measures, which can be assessed and included in mainstreaming adaptive management systems for climate change. Suggested recommendations (particularly paragraphs 7 and 8 of Document No. UNEP/CBD/SBSTTA/137) should thus include farmers, local communities and indigenous peoples, in recognition of their rights to participation in all these processes.

Ocean Fertilization 'Fix' For Global Warming

Ocean fertilization, the process of adding iron
or other nutrients to the ocean to cause large

algal blooms, has been proposed as a possible 

solution to global warming because the growing
algae absorb carbon dioxide as they grow.
(Credit: iStockphoto/Brett Hillyard)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/1 1/0711291
32753.htm

Web address:
http ://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/
071129 132753.htm

Ocean Fertilization 'Fix' For Global Warming
Discredited By New Research
ScienceDaily (Nov. 30, 2007) — Scientists have revealed an
important discovery that raises doubts concerning the viability of
plans to fertilize the ocean to solve global warming, a projected
$100 billion venture.

Research performed at Stanford and Oregon State Universities
suggests that ocean fertilization may not be an effective method of
reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a major contributor to
global warming. Ocean fertilization, the process of adding iron or
other nutrients to the ocean to cause large algal blooms, has been
proposed as a possible solution to global warming because the
growing algae absorb carbon dioxide as they grow.

However, this process, which is analogous to adding fertilizer to a
lawn to help the grass grow, only reduces carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere if the carbon incorporated into the algae sinks to
deeper waters. This process, which scientists call the "Biological
Pump", has been thought to be dependent on the abundance of
algae in the top layers of the ocean. The more algae in a bloom,
the more carbon is transported, or "pumped", from the
atmosphere to the deep ocean.

To test this theory, researchers compared the abundance of algae in the surface waters of the world's oceans with
the amount of carbon actually sinking to deep water. They found clear seasonal patterns in both algal abundance
and carbon sinking rates. However, the relationship between the two was surprising: less carbon was transported to
deep water during a summertime bloom than during the rest of the year. This analysis has never been done before
and required designing specialized mathematical algorithms.

"By jumping a mathematical hurdle we found a new globally synchronous signal," said Dr. Lutz.
"This discovery is very surprising", said lead author Dr. Michael Lutz, now at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel
School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. "If, during natural plankton blooms, less carbon actually sinks to deep
water than during the rest of the year, then it suggests that the Biological Pump leaks.

More material is recycled in shallow water and less sinks to depth, which makes sense if you consider how this
ecosystem has evolved in a way to minimize loss", said Lutz. "Ocean fertilization schemes, which resemble an
artificial summer, may not remove as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as has been suggested because they
ignore the natural processes revealed by this research."

This study closely follows a September Ocean Iron Fertilization symposium at the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution (WHOI) attended by leading scientists, international lawyers, policy makers, and concerned
representatives from government, business, academia and environmental organizations.

Topics discussed included potential environmental dangers, economic implications, and the uncertain effectiveness
of ocean fertilization. To date none of the major ocean fertilization experiments have verified that a significant
amount of deep ocean carbon sequestration occurs. Some scientists have suggested that verification may require
more massive and more permanent experiments. Together with commercial operators they plan to go ahead with
large-scale and more permanent ocean fertilization experiments and note that potential negative environmental
consequences must be balanced against the harm expected due to ignoring climate change.

During the Ocean Iron Fertilization meeting Dr. Hauke Kite-Powell, of the Marine Policy Center at WHOI,
estimated the possible future value of ocean fertilization at $100 billion of the emerging international carbon trading
market, which has the goal of mitigating global warming. However, according to Professor Rosemary Rayfuse, an
expert in International Law and the Law of the Sea at the University of New South Wales, Australia, who also
attended the Woods Hole meeting, ocean fertilization projects are not currently approved under any carbon credit
regulatory scheme and the sale of offsets or credits from ocean fertilization on the unregulated voluntary markets is
basically nothing short of fraudulent.

'There are too many scientific uncertainties relating both to the efficacy of ocean fertilization and its possible
environmental side effects that need to be resolved before even larger experiments should be considered, let alone
the process commercialized,' Rayfuse says. 'All States have an obligation to protect and preserve the marine
environment and to ensure that all activities carried out under their jurisdiction and control, including marine
scientific research and commercial ocean fertilization activities do not cause pollution.
Ocean fertilization is 'dumping' which is essentially prohibited under the law of the sea. There is no point trying to
ameliorate the effects of climate change by destroying the oceans -- the very cradle of life on earth. Simply doing
more and bigger of that which has already been demonstrated to be ineffective and potentially more harmful than
good is counter-intuitive at best.'

Indeed, the global study of Dr. Lutz and colleagues suggests that greatly enhanced carbon sequestration should not
be expected no matter the location or duration of proposed large-scale ocean fertilization experiments.
According to Dr Lutz "The limited duration of previous ocean fertilization experiments may not be why carbon
sequestration wasn't found during those artificial blooms. This apparent puzzle could actually reflect how marine
ecosystems naturally handle blooms and agrees with our findings. A bloom is like ringing the marine ecosystem
dinner bell. The microbial and food web dinner guests appear and consume most of the fresh algal food."
"Our study highlights the need to understand natural ecosystem processes, especially in a world where change is
occurring so rapidly," concluded Dr. Lutz.
The findings of Dr. Lutz and colleagues coincide with and affirm this month's decision of the London Convention
(the International Maritime Organization body that oversees the dumping of wastes and other matter at sea) to
regulate controversial commercial ocean fertilization schemes. This gathering of international maritime parties
advised that such schemes are currently not scientifically justified.

Strategies to sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide, including the enhancement of biological sinks through
processes such as ocean fertilization, will be considered by international governmental representatives during the
thirteenth United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conference in Bali next month.

This research was recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Mi ami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science.
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