|
I WAS disappointed that Arthur Yap, the secretary of
agriculture, did not touch at all on climate change when he and his
staff met last week with the editors of The Manila Times in a
roundtable discussion.
He dwelt at great length—and
rightly so—on the crop production and infrastructure programs of
the Department of Agriculture (DA). There was not even a hint of
their implication of global warming.
Global warming cannot be
reversed, not in a thousand years. The only thing we can do is to
keep the planet from getting even warmer. Within the century,
violent storms, severe droughts, rising seas, and hordes of
disease-bearing insects are almost certain to happen.
The cause is
well-known—greenhouse gases. And one of these is methane which,
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said, is more
potent than carbon dioxide as a cause of global warming.
Rice fields emit methane.
Large-scale rice farming will increase the volume of methane in the
atmosphere. Departments of Agriculture in rice producing countries
will have to address and solve this problem singly and collectively.
The responsibility of the DA is
to call attention to it now and get its scientists to search for a
possible answer. It should also put in place measures to limit
methane emissions from rice fields—including limiting rice
production.
The other issue is the production
of biofuels. Distilling ethanol from sugarcane juice or extracting
coco methyl ester from coconut oil are not sustainable. Food has to
take precedence over transportation fuel.
The DA should craft a policy that
will not divert food crops to transportation fuel and ensure that
the limited hectarage for food production is not taken over by
biofuel producers.
Irrigation is another matter.
Before the DA commits its billions to more irrigation systems in
their present design, it should study carefully water sources and
the technologies for efficiently distributing water for human,
industrial and farm use. Alternatives to the practice of flooding
rice fields should be found.
The IPCC predicts that by the
middle of the century there will be droughts, floods and heat waves
that will result in severe water shortages.
Has the DA considered these in
its infrastructure plans? Long-term plans—and I mean longer than
the 10 years that are the limit of the vision of bureaucrats—have
to be laid out for such extreme events.
The World Water Council (WWC)
said that by 2015 about 3.5 billion people might not have enough
water to drink.
“Many regions in this planet,”
according to the WWC, “already suffer from severe water shortage,
where the annual rate in cubic meters per person is less than 500.
“An insufficient amount of the
precious fluid necessary to produce foodstuffs, the impaired
development of industry, urban areas and tourism, and the emergence
of health problems are some of the consequences that derive from
water shortage.”
Turning to another matter, has
the DA considered the effects of high levels of CO2 in the
atmosphere on crop production and fisheries?
Science on June 30, 2006,
published an article by Stephen P. Long, et al., titled “Food for
thought: lower-than-expected crop yield stimulation with rising CO2
concentrations.”
The article provoked a lively
debate among experts in the plant sciences. The mechanisms have
still to be determined but the effects are already known. CO2 levels
affect negatively crop productivity per hectare. As the seas become
more acidic, species of fish that are preferred as food might suffer
collapse or extinction.
The DA has a key role in
President Arroyo’s Task Force on Climate Change.
Its contributions to the policy
recommendations that the Task Force will perforce issue soon should
be based on scientific findings and should take into account the
recommendations of the IPCC.
The DA should work closely with
the international community in all carbon mitigation efforts.
Collaborative research with other countries is the best way to
accelerate the finding of solutions to urgent problems—not only in
agriculture but in all areas that have a bearing on climate change.
In brief, the DA should have a
clear, time-scaled plan that the country can accept. The choices are
hard but they have to be made.
|
