Green Economy in a Blue World-Full Report

Unbalancing the cycle Nitrogen flows, megatonnes

1890

1990

Atmospheric nitrogen

Atmospheric nitrogen

Bacterial fixation

Lightning 5

Industrial combustion 21

15

89 Bacterial fixation

Bacterial fixation

100

Nitrogen oxides

Nitrogen oxides

Bacterial fixation and haber process

118

Fires 13

Fires

6

Wild plants

Wild plants

Farms

Farms

Source: The Economist, 2011

played a fundamental role in catalyzing the green revolution, it is also clear that the global environmental problems and socio-economic impacts that have resulted are significant; the impacts of excess nitrogen in the EU alone are estimated at €70-320 billion per year (Sutton, et al., 2011). In addition, the energy consumption and associated environmental costs for fertilizer production are also significant: including natural gas consumption, an estimated 1-2 per cent of all global energy is consumed in the Haber-Bosch process (Smil, 2011), with substantial associated impacts on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. The importance of this chapter The release of excess reactive nitrogen to the oceans, causing coastal eutrophication and increasingly frequent hypoxia and ecosystem damage, has become a problem of global scale. The estimated socio-economic costs of excess nitrogen in marine and freshwater systems run intohundredsof billionsofUSdollars, fromlosses to tourism revenue through degraded coastal locations, decimated fisheries and fish resources from hypoxia, and habitat degradation. Our current approach to managing nutrients represents a huge economic waste – tens of billions of dollars per year – via a very linear approach to nutrient management consisting of manufacture/mining, (often inefficient) use as fertilizer in agriculture, harvesting and sale of crops and livestock, consumption, and lastly, release of the majority of the nutrients via waste-water systems and agricultural run- off of nitrogen and phosphorus to coastal waters. This chapter focuses on the need to address eutrophication and ocean hypoxia by reducing global nitrogen (and phosphorus) pollution through a concerted suite of legal/ regulatory, policy, economic/financial and institutional actions at local, national, regional and global levels. The benefits would be to the wider global ecosystem and the sectors

that are highly dependent on healthy marine ecosystems (fisheries, tourism, human health, etc.), but also in reduced global energy demand (and consequential reduction in CO 2 emissions), reduced GHG emissions from farming, and stimulation of innovative new business partnerships between the agriculture, waste- water management and fertilizer industries. 2 Challenges and opportunities The global nutrient pollution and ocean hypoxia issuepresents anumber of significant challenges as well as opportunities. Challenges include the scale of human perturbation of the nutrient cycle; the diversity of both point and non-point sources from agriculture (fertilizer, manure), waste water and certain industries; limited adoption and implementation of available and appropriate legal, policy, and institutional mechanisms and economic instruments that promote more cyclic use of nutrients; and an only modest level of global political, public and media recognition of the scale and impact, particularly socio-economic and on livelihoods, of nutrients and hypoxia on ocean ecosystems and economies. Conversely, the availability of a fairly wide range of proven policy, regulatory and economic nutrient management tools creates a tremendous global opportunity to scale up these approaches. Such a scaling up would not only incrementally reduce global nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, begin to slow down and reverse eutrophication and ocean hypoxia, and restore healthy marine ecosystem-dependent economies and jobs, it would also create opportunities for innovative new nutrient efficiency, recovery and reuse business and investment partnerships between the key involved sectors – agriculture, waste-water management and fertilizer manufacturing. While not precisely known at present, the potential scale of new business models and opportunities that greening the

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