Green Economy in a Blue World-Full Report

EU has remained roughly flat since 1992 and much remains to be done to achieve desired water quality standards in many areas. Cap and Trade on nutrient emissions to national or regional water bodies Cap-and-trade schemes for pollutants set an overall cap on emissions, allocate pollution allowances to emitters (either free or via sale of emission credits) and then allow individual polluters to trade their emissions credits via an openmarket. Emitterswho can reduce emissions more cost-effectively can then profit via sale of their extra emission allowances to less efficient entities. Cap and trade is widely considered to be the most economically efficient approach to pollution reduction as it lets market forces work their magic to direct capital where it can be used most efficiently. Cap and trade has been effectively applied for a number of air pollutants. For greenhouse gases the largest is the EU Emission Trading Scheme (UK Department of Energy and Climate Change, 2012). In the US there is a national market to reduce acid rain through trading in sulphur dioxide emissions, and several regional markets in nitrogen oxides Thereareanumberofnutrienttradingprogrammes currently in operation in North America. The Long Island Sound trading programme administered by the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, for example, trades nitrogen credits between point sources, which are the main cause of excessive nitrogen levels in the sound. While not yet under implementation, a 2003 study by WRI (Greenhalgh & Sauer, 2003) assessed a variety of agricultural policy options to mitigate the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico and found that nutrient trading would be the most cost-effective solution and also would deliver improvements in farm income. The Helsinki Commission for the Baltic Sea has also conducted some technical studies on the potential for nutrient trading for both point and non-point sources but does not yet appear to have put any specific programmes into operation. Similar studies were conducted for the Danube (UNDP/GEF Danube Regional Project, 2005) under the UNDP/GEF Danube River Basin programme but also do not appear to have leveraged any follow-up action. While nutrient emissions trading for point sources (primarily WWTPs) can be relatively straightforward due to ease of measuring emissions against a baseline, it should be recalled that 90 per cent of global nitrogen emissions are from agricultural non-point sources. Diffuse agricultural sources (manure and fertilizer run- off) present a significant measurement challenge to verify emission reductions against an agreed baseline. The uncertainties involved with non-

has been increasing, make ocean hypoxia a global issue in terms of the level of action that may be required as well as the longer- term threat to broader ocean health under business-as-usual scenarios. Similarly, the diversity of point (untreated waste water) and non-point (fertilizer and manure run-off from farms, airborne deposition) sources of nutrient pollution demand action at all geographic levels – local (village, municipality, province), national, regional (shared river basins and Large Marine Ecosystems), and global – if the issue is to be addressed in a comprehensive manner. As such, a tool kit of nutrient management and reduction options needs to encompass options that can address both point and non-point sources at the different scales of interest. Table 1 summarizes a range of policy, regulatory, economic/financial and institutional nutrient management tools that may be appropriate for application at these different geographic scales. As Table 1 summarizes, there are a wide variety of policy, legal, financial and/or economic, and institutional tools and strategies that can help to reduce nutrient pollution at local, national, regional and global scales. A number of these have been applied in different settings; this section reviews some experiences with some of these tools. Good agricultural practices TheEUNitratesDirective (EuropeanCommission, 2012) (part of the EUWater Framework Directive) requires implementation of Good Agricultural Practice (GAP) by farmers including: • Measures limiting the time when fertilizers can be applied on land, in order to allow N availability only when the crop needs nutrients; • Measures limiting the conditions for fertilizer application (steeply sloping ground, frozen or snowcoveredground, near water courses); • Requirement for aminimumstorage capacity for livestock manure; • Crop rotations, soil winter cover, catch crops, in order to limit leaching during the wet seasons • These measures are mandatory in Nitrogen Vulnerable Zones (NVZ) • Application limits of 170 kg N manure per hectare per year Between 2004 and 2007, nitrate concentrations in surface water remained stable or fell at 70 per cent of monitored sites in the EU. Despite these measures, nitrogen fertilizer consumption in the 3.1 Learning from successful and unsuccessful international experiences

in a Blue World

87