When cow urine falls on degraded land, it releases far more nitrous oxide – a potent greenhouse gas – than when absorbed by healthy pasture. The findings of a new study show additional benefits of landscape restoration and conservation.

The exceptional climate-altering capabilities of cattle are mainly due to methane, which they blast into the atmosphere during their daily digestive routine. Cattle urine is a lesser-known climate offender. It produces nitrous oxide (N2O), which has warming power far greater than that of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main driver of global warming. A study conducted by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and partners shows that these N2O emissions can be significantly curbed by healthy cattle pastures.

For the study, researchers collected urine from cattle at research sites in five countries across Latin America and the Caribbean. They spilled these 500 mL samples on paired cattle fields classified as degraded or healthy, which was determined by vegetation coverage. In six of the seven test sites, degraded pastures emitted significantly more N2O – sometimes up to three times as much. The results were published January 29, 2019 in Scientific Reports, an open-access journal by the publishers of Nature.

“Degraded pastures are bad in so many ways,” said Ngonidzashe Chirinda, a CIAT researcher and the study’s lead author. “This study adds to the case for land restoration. Degraded pastures not only affect food security and the livelihood of farmers today but affects the livelihood of future farmers because they emit more gases that cause global warming.”

The results add urgency to global land restoration agreements, including Initiative 20×20, which aims to bring into restoration 20 million hectares of land into restoration in Latin America by 2020 as a first major step toward even more ambitious restoration targets.

Estimates vary, but Chirinda calculates, conservatively, that there are 150 million hectares of degraded lands in Latin America. Brazil alone is home to some 80 million hectares of degraded pastureland.

Degraded livestock land is generally characterized by overgrazing, soil compaction, loss of organic material and low levels of nutrients and soil carbon. Large-scale land restoration with improved forage grasses, rotational grazing and the addition of shrubs and trees (silvopastoral farming) could significantly mitigate the negative climate effects wrought by degradation. In addition to reducing N2O emissions, restored landscapes generally contain more carbon, have healthier soils and more robust and productive livestock.

“This study highlights the importance of avoiding land degradation in the first place,” said Todd Rosenstock, a co-author based at the World Agroforestry (ICRAF). “Maintaining healthy pastures appears to reinforce goals of both the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification simultaneously.”

The curious results from the single test site that did not align with the study results – in Taluma, Colombia – may be attributed to several factors that merit further research. N2O emissions there were by far the lowest at any test site and were the same on both degraded and healthy pastures. The cattle urine used in the experiment had the lowest nitrogen content compared to the other research sites, which likely contributed to the results. The forage grass used there, Brachiaria humidicola, also has an especially high nitrification inhibition capacity, meaning that it prevents nitrogen from becoming N2O.

Power of data from far-flung places
The study is a victory for well-designed, modest-budget science. The project began with a weeklong training session at CIAT headquarters in Cali, Colombia, where a team of Ph.D. students from the additional participating countries – Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua and Trinidad and Tobago – helped design the research plan and standardised the study’s methodology.

The students returned to their home countries and carried out the experiment to coincide with their area’s rainy seasons, to assure similar climate conditions across study sites. (The exception was Taluma, which was sampled during a period characterised by low rainfall, which is also another possible reason why the N2O emissions were lower there).

“The power is in the number of data points from all the different countries,” said Chirinda.

Better cattle greenhouse gas estimates
Researchers said the study is a useful step toward creating a more detailed picture of the scope of greenhouse gas emissions from cattle farming in LAC.

“Since work on emissions from livestock in the region is not common, this study generates at least one piece of information that is missing from theoretical greenhouse gas estimates in the LAC region,” said Miguel Andrés Arango, a co-author and scientist at Colombia’s AGROSAVIA, the nation’s largest agriculture research organisation.

“Being able to estimate the real impact of cattle production will allow us to propose potential practices for reducing emissions,” said Arango. “It is high time we know the emission factors for our agricultural systems.”

Collaborators and funders
The study was conducted under the framework of the Latin America climate change Mitigation Network (LAMNET) and implemented as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), which is carried out with support from CGIAR Fund Donors and through bilateral funding agreements.

Collaborators on the project included researchers affiliated with the following organisations: the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua; the National Institute of Agricultural Technology in Argentina (INTA); the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) and the Institute of Agriculture and Forestry Management and Certification (IMAFLORA)  in Brazil; the University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago; Universidad Nacional de Colombia; the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA); and the University of Vermont.

The Kaduna State Government on Tuesday, January 29, 2019 said it had passed a bill to the legislative arm to review laws for proper protection of the state’s forest resources.

Mr Anthony Kachiro, the Director of Forest Resources in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry Development of the state, disclosed this to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Kaduna, the state capital.

Kachiro, who doubles as the State Chairman, Task Force on Forest Protection, said that the new laws would replace the old ones that had become obsolete.

He said that the bill, when it became law, would provide a proper legal backing to the state officials in terms of sanctions, fines and prosecution of those encroaching in the state forest reserves.

According to the official, the state government is working in line with the international effort to tackle the effects of global warming and environmental hazard of desertification.

He said while the laws were being fine-tuned for proper enforcement, the state government had set up a task force with members drawn from the state timber and firewood dealers associations to tackle illegal felling of trees for local use and for business.

He said that the task force had recently impounded six trucks of firewood and timber being transported from Kasuwan Magani in Kajuru Local Government Area and Mi-Ido, near Ladugga in Kachia Local Government Area.

When asked if any arrest was made from the impounded vehicles, the official said: “No, we didn’t arrest anyone, but six vehicles from a particular vendor were impounded on their way from Ladduga.’’

“Those involved will be sanctioned and fined appropriately to ensure that the forests resources are protected,” Kachiro said.

He said that the task force was also monitoring those engaged in illegal felling of trees to make charcoal for business and proper sanctions would equally be applied on them to curtail their activities.

“We are working to ensure that for everyone tree that is cut down, at least three others are planted in the same area by the same person,” he said.

On the number of trees planted in 2018 in the state, Kachiro said that the ministry had concentrated in the maintenance and management of the trees planted in 2017 in its effort to tackle desertification.

The official, however, urged the state government to provide the task force with adequate security for proper discharge of its mandate.

By Shuaib Sadiq

Momentum to repair degraded lands and to manage droughts more effectively has picked up, according to reports released for review by an inter-governmental meeting that opened on Monday, January 28, 2019 in Georgetown, Guyana.

An assessment of land degradation in 127 countries revealed that close to 20 percent of healthy land was degraded in the first 15 years of this Millennium. Globally, 169 countries are affected by land degradation, desertification or drought. In the last four years, 82 countries have set targets aiming to halt land degradation by 2030 and 44 of the 70 countries regularly hit by drought are setting up drought management plans to ensure droughts do not turn into disasters.

The findings are said to be the most comprehensive to date, with data submitted by 135 countries and an assessment of degradation monitored using earth observations.

The Seventeenth Session of the Committee for the Review of the Implementation of the UN’s Convention to Combat Desertification (CRIC17) taking place in Guyana will review the reports over the next three days. Their recommendations on further actions to ramp up this momentum will be tabled at the fourteenth session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) to be held from October 7 to 8, 2019 in New Delhi, India.

“Momentum is with us,” announced Monique Barbut, Executive Secretary of the Convention, during the opening of CRIC 17.

“The first piece of good news is that we know more and more about what is going on…. how much land we have degraded globally in the first 15 years of this Millennium, how life has changed for the communities living on degraded lands, how droughts are evolving globally, the changing status of endangered biological species, and the financial resources available to address desertification,” she said.

She also described as good news the reports’ findings that “in all regions, rural populations now have more access to safe drinking water, poverty has declined by 27% overall, at least 120 countries will eventually have targets to curb land degradation and there is growing interest from domestic and global private finance to invest in land management.”

Barbut, who steps down as the Convention’s Executive Secretary next month, however cautioned that “aspects such as land governance, education, demography and land use planning still have a long way to go,” and called on governments not to underestimate their ability to trigger change in the most pressing areas, but to be “brave.”

Joseph Harmon, Minister of State, Guyana, said “although milestones have been achieved… we still have to be steadfast in addressing land degradation.”

“The continuing degradation of land and soils is a severe threat to the provision of ecosystem services and economic development globally,” he said.

Harmon said “the pressures on land are increasing due to urbanization, population growth and rising demands for food, feed, fuel and fiber. Halting land degradation is therefore a prerequisite for sustainable development,” he stressed.

Global efforts to combat desertification began in 1977. However, the rapid loss of productive land due to a combination of poor land uses and growing extreme and erratic weather effects now affects more people than ever before.

Two other recent reports examined the extent and effects of land degradation on livelihoods. The Global Land Outlook released in 2017 found a persistent loss of 20 percent of the Earth’s vegetative cover from 1998-2013. The “Assessment of Land Degradation” released in 2018 showed that land degradation impacts over 3.2 billion people. The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change is expected to release its own assessment of the effects of climate change on land degradation later this year.

CRIC17 ends on Wednesday, January 30.