Black Carbon as a Cause of Arctic Ice Melting

Yesterday I’ve been to an interesting side event on black carbon and its influence on Arctic ice melting. The event was hosted by Bellona (www.bellona.org) and a number of people gave presentations, including a guy from Greenpeace Russia. Agricultural burning in Russia, apart from releasing carbon in the atmosphere, creating soot clouds and posing risks for human health, was said to be a cause of 97 percent of forest fires. The black carbon stays in the atmosphere from several days to several weeks, but is an immediate cause of global warming, also Arctic ice melting. The practice of soil and agricultural waste burning seems to be firmly established in agricultural practices in Russia (also in Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries). The main difficulty, according to Vladimir Tchouprov, is to influence the behavior of people and to change social norms, since agricultural burning – warming the soil in spring and creating immediate fertilization, also helping to get rid of wastes in the fall ­– is perceived as something absolutely conventional and normal by farmers and ordinary people, despite the problem of forest fires is as acute as ever. It is also not brought up to a higher level to be seriously considered by federal government and parliament. It seems like there are no or not adequate provisions in the federal law relating to limiting agricultural burning and setting the rules for its regulation (clear procedures for farmers to follow, if not banning at all). Greenpeace Russia hopes to influence the situation through working with government and public education for farmers (surprisingly not started yet). The presenters agreed that encouraging farmers to refuse from agricultural burning should be combined with some incentives (like subsidies) or other alternatives to make this more attractive, for example, teaching them how to convert agricultural waste to alternative energy.

Potential of including black carbon into the future climate agreement is quite low, according to presenters. The issue is discussed but is not a part of negotiations yet, despite that, in a short-term perspective, this is the quickest possible way to reduce global warming.