文档介绍：WHY NATURAL LANDSCAPES CATCH AND STORE WATER, NUTRIENTS & CARBON
This previously unpublished article contains material which has been
central to my teaching of permaculture for over a decade and in particular
to the permaculture principle Catch and Store Energy. It provides a
framework for evaluating catchment management and land restoration
strategies more fundamental than the indigenous biodiversity conservation
framework which dominates the environmental mainstream.
WHY NATURAL LANDSCAPES CATCH AND STORE
WATER, NUTRIENTS & CARBON
Carbon Sink or Carbon Storage: greenhouse gas as a symptom rather than cause.
According to the consensus of the global munity the “enhanced greenhouse
effect” is already contributing to global climate change which is predicted to intensify over
the next century. Climate change is now widely accepted as the greatest environmental
threat to humanity.
Too much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere
from human activity over the last century is the cause. The solutions proposed fall into two
broad categories,
• reducing the burning of fossil fuels (which is the primary source) and
• creating storages which will take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
These storages of carbon are called sinks predicated on the view that carbon is a pollutant
to be got rid of.
There is now a great body of research, literature and debate about the relative value of
carbon storage in trees (as opposed to the trees themselves) . This storage is likely to
e an internationally tradable asset to partially offset fossil fuel carbon currently
being burnt. This idea of tradeability is a legal response to the fact that “carbon storage”
tied to ownership of trees and land is not currently useful to the corporations who need to
create or buy more carbon storage to offset their massive outputs of greenhouse (carbon
containing) gasses. This market solution has some merit from the top dow