Forest science and forestry education
for a carbon, water, energy and nutrient-constrained world Andrew Campbell Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods Charles Darwin University www.cdu.edu.au/riel
Personal declarations • Farming background south-western Victoria – Family farming in the district since 1860s, own farm managed since 1987 – 450ha near Cavendish: 30% farm forestry, 10% environmental reserves, 60% leased to a neighbour for prime lambs
• Forestry & rural sociology: Creswick, Melbourne & Wageningen – Last cohort to graduate from Creswick 1980
• Forester Victorian government • First National Landcare Facilitator ‘89-92 • Environment Australia SES 1995-2000 • CEO Land & Water Australia 2000-06 • Triple Helix Consulting 2007-10
Research Institute for the Environment & Livelihoods (RIEL) • A new Tier One Research Institute • Consolidating CDU environmental research in one place • Interdisciplinary across the natural and social sciences • Focus on northern Australia and the region to its north • Strong emphasis on: • collaborative research partnerships (including ANU) • Indigenous engagement • working with research end-users to ensure relevance and Presentation Title | 00 Month 2010 | Slide 3 adoptability
RIEL Research Themes • Natural Resources-based Livelihoods • Coastal and Marine ecology and management • Freshwater ecology and management • Savanna Management and Wildlife Conservation • Tropical Resource Futures
Presentation Title | 00 Month 2010 | Slide 4
RIEL & the Fenner School – natural partners • The ANU and CDU have a high level partnership • NARU – the North Australia Research Unit gives the ANU a footprint (& accommodation) on the Darwin campus of CDU • We can offer jointly-badged PhDs • We have both overlapping and complementary capabilities • And both directors are long-term Queanbeyan residents… • So have a think about doing RIEL fieldwork or post-grad studies Presentation Title | 00 Month 2010 | Slide 5
Key Points • The age of cheap, abundant fossil fuel energy is coming to an end • The age of carbon accounting and pricing is beginning • Rural landscapes will be more contested and more multifunctional • Australia needs a third agricultural revolution • Well-planned woody perennials have an important role • New opportunities for forest science and forestry education • Reflections on the value of forestry training • In a world where carbon is valued, forestry should be a cool profession, attracting top talent 6
Drivers for change • Climate • Water • Energy • Food • Population, demography, consumption and development pressures
• Competition for land & water resources • Resource depletion & degradation
Climate The core problem: population & carbon emissions
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Source: WBCSD & IUCN 2008; Harvard Medical School 2008
Water • Each calorie takes one litre of water to produce, on average • Like the Murray Darling Basin, all the world’s major food producing basins are effectively ‘closed’ or already over-committed
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Feeding the world • The world needs to increase food production by about 70% by 2050, & improve distribution • We have done this in the past, mainly through clearing, cultivating and irrigating more land – and intensification, better varieties, more fertiliser, pesticides
• Climate change and oil depletion is narrowing those options, with limits to water, land, energy & nutrients • Rich consumers have major concerns about modern industrial food systems – human health, animal welfare, environment, fair trade 10
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But maybe we ain’t seen nothin yet….
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World
Energy & nutrients • The era of abundant, cheap fossil fuels is coming to a close
Australia
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• Rising oil costs = rising costs for fertiliser, agrichemicals, transport and food
Energy (2) “ a significant risk of a peak in conventional oil production before 2020. The risks presented by global oil depletion deserve much more serious attention by the research and policy communities.” UK Energy Research Centre, An assessment of the evidence for a near-term peak in global oil production, August 2009
“we have to leave oil before oil leaves us, and we have to prepare ourselves for that day” Dr Fatih Birol, Chief Economist IEA, 3 August 2009 “The challenge of feeding 7 or 8 billion people while oil supplies are falling is stupefying. It’ll be even greater if governments keep pretending that it isn’t going to happen.” George Monbiot, The Guardian 16.11.09 14
Water, energy, and GDP Water and energy have historically been closely coupled with GDP in Australia
Energy & GDP
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Water & GDP
Our challenge now is to radically reduce the energy, carbon and water-intensity of our economy
from Proust, Dovers, Foran, Newell, Steffen & Troy (2007)
Climate-energy-water feedbacks • Saving water often uses more energy, and viceversa • Efforts to moderate climate often use more energy +/or water •
E.g. coal-fired power stations with CCS will be 25-33% more waterintensive
• Using more fossil energy exacerbates climate chaos 16
from Proust, Dovers, Foran, Newell, Steffen & Troy (LWA 2007)
Profound technical challenges 1. To decouple economic growth from carbon emissions 2. To adapt to an increasingly difficult climate 3. To increase water productivity — decoupling the 1 litre per calorie relationship
4. To increase energy productivity – –
more food energy out per unit of energy in while shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy
5. To develop more sustainable food systems – –
while conserving biodiversity and improving landscape amenity, soil health, animal welfare & human health
6. TO DO ALL OF THE ABOVE SIMULTANEOUSLY! — improving sustainability and resilience
We need a third agricultural revolution • High level goals: e.g. 50% increase in food & fibre production while doubling water productivity, reducing net emissions to zero and becoming a net energy producer from agricultural and pastoral lands
• How to get there? – Closed loop farming systems, not leaking: (water, energy, nutrients, carbon, biodiversity, human talent) – Smart metering, sensing, telemetry, robotics, guidance, biotech – Better understanding of soil carbon & microbial activity – Radically reducing waste in all parts of the food chain – Farming systems producing renewable (2nd gen) bioenergy – Biodiverse carbon sinks to offset unavoidable emissions – Attracting young talent back into agriculture, forestry and rural communities 18
Woody biomass energy • Learning from the Vikings: – Finland: same area and population as Victoria, tougher climate, shorter growing season, slower growth rates – Private forestry thinnings etc produce 23% of Finland’s primary energy, over 75% of thermal energy needs, and 20% of Finland’s electricity – In Sweden it is 20% (already higher than oil) with a target of 40%
• Foran et al suggest woody biomass energy can fuel Australia • WA already in the lead – 2nd Gen biofuels (mallees) 40-50 times more energetically efficient than ethanol 19
CRC Future Farm Industries energy trees Developing an efficient supply chain for woody energy crops integrated into wheatbelt farming systems. Solving a bottleneck with the invention of a new harvesting head that can handle tough mallee species
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Biocarbon/energy integrated into agricultural systems vs replacing them
• Mallees occupy 8-10% of farms • Minimal food production trade-off • 48 times more energetically efficient than ethanol • 300-550mm rainfall zone 21
— minimal water yield loss and low opportunity cost
• SE Australia is already “post-agricultural” in several regions • We have some elements of a new paradigm – Ecoservices etc – Carbon offsets market (Greenfleet et al) – New corporate players — e.g. VicSuper, energy companies
• We know areas that need to expand – – – –
Water conservation Habitat restoration and reconnection Residential Renewable energy (biomass, biogas, wind, solar)
• and we know how not to do it — MIS! 22
“Carbon plus” wool, beef and sheep meat
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Forestry integrated with farming vs replacing farming
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Transition to carbon-neutral, energy-positive rural landscapes
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The integration imperative • Managing whole landscapes – – – – –
“where nature meets culture” (Simon Schama) landscapes are socially constructed beyond ‘ecological apartheid’ NRM means people management engage values, perceptions, aspirations, behaviour
• Integration - across issues — e.g climate, energy, water, food, biodiversity - across scales — agencies, governments, short-term, long-term - across the triple helix — landscapes, lifestyles & livelihoods
Scales for response to climate change • Many of the main drivers of biodiversity loss operate at the landscape-scale e.g. habitat fragmentation, invasive species and changed fire regimes. • It is the scale which lends itself to integrated, whole of ecosystem and cross tenure solutions. • In Australia the most threatened components of biodiversity are in the intensive zones and CSIRO 2010
Forest Science and Forestry Education • Extremely relevant and useful — more now than ever • Looming gap between supply and demand for graduates • Key attributes: – Breadth across the physical, chemical and biological sciences & ecology – Significant doses of applied economics and management – Important toolkit for a carbon economy – Just enough social science to be dangerous (room for improvement) – Explicitly embracing a wide range of scales in space and time – Comfortable with dynamic systems, uncertainty & non-linear processes 30
Forest Science and Forestry Education (2) • Main challenges – Attracting top talent — professional image needs a makeover – Moving beyond polarised forest policy debates – Offering practical, enticing ways to ‘sharpen the saw’ (e.g. Master Tree Grower) – National Forestry Masters Program (NFMP) an important framework – Needs to complement national R,D&E strategies – Industry support and investment in education is critical
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Changes in environmental thinking Issue Focus
Existing approaches
Landscape and resilience based approaches
Biodiversity conservation
• threatened species & habitats • protected areas priority • limited private land involvement
• ecosystem functions • critical/keystone species • linked whole-of-system
Science input
• • • •
• • • •
Policy tools
• mix of approaches • short term objectives • fixed targets
• changed mix of approaches ? • long-term objectives ? • adaptive/flexible targets ? • management at multiple temporal and temporal scales ?
Governance models
• rigid institutional structures • whole-of-government coordination • community engagement
• • • •
distribution & abundance of species static ecosystem structures models of predictable change optimization and economic tools
non-linear dynamics and complex systems shocks, feedbacks, thresholds cross-scale interactions complex social-ecological systems
integration across institutions ? integrated planning across multiple scales ? adaptive governance structures ? devolved/shared decision-making ?
Source, Thompson & Flanigan May 2011 unpub
Sustainability and Resilience • Complementary concepts • Sustainability remains relevant and desirable – Living within our means – Thinking long term (inter-generational equity) – Distinguishing between depletable and renewable resources – Avoiding or limiting actions that degrade, pollute, overuse or compromise ecosystem function
• BUT: Sustainability is less instructive around: – Social and economic dimensions – Operating in contexts with inherent variability 33
Resilience – the new kid on the block • Basically refers to the capacity of a system to absorb shocks, reorganise and retain the same functions – As resilience declines, it takes a progressively smaller shock to push a system across a threshold
• Adds value in explicitly embracing change and variability • Introduces the useful concept of thresholds or tipping points • Also embraces scale – Resilience at a given scale requires an understanding of at least one scale up & down
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Rebranding Forestry & Agriculture • As brands, Forestry and Agriculture are tired and faded – negative connotations in terms of profitability, lifestyle, ‘old economy’ and environmental virtue — tend to be judged by worst practice – very low levels of professional training (7% with a degree in 2004, c/f 17% for mining and 24% for services) *
• We have to re-think, re-tool, re-skill and re-brand • Carbon pricing and energy insecurity presents a huge opportunity for farm & agroforestry
– Vis Reid & Wilson 1985, Campbell 1990, Alexandra & Hall 1998, Youl 2001, Garnaut 2007, Lang 2008, Wentworth Group 2009 35
* Source: Bull & Kanowski IFA presentation 2009
Rebranding Forestry & Agriculture (2) • Forestry (like agriculture) can be seen as core to the food system, the energy system and even the health system – with a new story around carbon, water, energy, fibre, biodiversity and survival: ‘keepers of the long view’
• High quality Australian forestry — a key to responsible living
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Take home messages • Rural landscapes are more contested and squeezed between major drivers: climate, water, energy, food
• Australia needs a third agricultural revolution • Well-planned woody perennials have an important role • This creates exciting new opportunities for forest science and forestry education
• Our professional image and approach must change • Multifunctional rural landscapes offer a fertile seedbed 37
For more information
www.cdu.edu.au/riel www.triplehelix.com.a u