COPENHAGEN: Denmark, which last year introduced a pioneering carbon tax on livestock farming, on Wednesday announced an agreement to cut nitrogen emissions from agriculture and curb water pollution.
The Scandinavian country prides itself on being a leader in tackling global warming but waste from farming has stifled marine ecosystems.
The deal aims to reduce nitrogen emissions by 9,600 tons a year using a quota system.
“From 2027, farmers will receive an emissions quota based on the necessary reduction of nitrogen emissions in their catchment area,” the government announced in a statement.
The quotas will be adjusted according to the capacity of aquatic environments to absorb nitrogen emissions and based on farmers’ efforts to convert their land into natural habitats, it added.
Around 60 percent of Denmark’s territory is currently farmed, making it the country with the highest share of cultivated land, together with Bangladesh, according to a Danish parliamentary report.
The equivalent of 7,500 square kilometers (2,895 square miles) or 17 percent of metropolitan Denmark is affected by water deoxygenation, which is causing the disappearance of marine animals and plants, according to the Danish environment agency.
Researchers estimate that an annual reduction of 14,800 tons of nitrogen would be needed to restore good water quality.
The accord is a milestone for Denmark’s government, which in November last year announced details of the world’s first carbon tax on livestock emissions under a vast agriculture plan known as the Green Tripartite.
The plan also envisaged converting 10 percent of farmland into natural habitat, including 140,000 hectares (345,000 acres) currently cultivated on climate-damaging lowland soils.
Minister for Green Transition Jeppe Bruus told reporters the latest agreement “brings us toward two-thirds of the objective.”
“Have we completely reached our goal? No, not yet, there is still a lot of work to be done.”
The farmers’ confederation, though, condemned the deal as “an unnecessary obstacle for Danish agriculture.”
“The agreement means that some farmers will in future receive too many nitrogen quotas, while others will receive too few,” its president, Soren Sondergaard, said in a statement.
“For every farmer, it will amount to drawing their production conditions by lottery, with no possible recourse if the allocated emissions quota is a ‘losing ticket’, forcing them to abandon production.”
Denmark targets farm nitrogen emissions to boost water quality
https://arab.news/bq4z9
Denmark targets farm nitrogen emissions to boost water quality
- The Scandinavian country prides itself on being a leader in tackling global warming
- The deal aims to reduce nitrogen emissions by 9,600 tons a year using a quota system
Greek coast guard search for 15 after migrant boat found adrift
- The two survivors reported that the vessel had become unstable due to bad weather and there was no means of getting shelter, food or water
ATHENS: Greek coast guard were on Monday searching for 15 people who fell into the water from a migrant boat that was found drifting off the coast of Crete with 17 bodies on board.
The 17 fatalities, all of them men, were discovered on Saturday on the craft, which was taking on water and partially deflated, some 26 nautical miles (48 kilometers) southwest of the island.
Post-mortem examinations were being carried out to determine how they died but Greek public television channel ERT suggested they may have suffered from hypothermia or dehydration.
A Greek coast guard spokeswoman told AFP that two survivors reported that “15 people fell in the water” after the motor cut out on Thursday, then the vessel drifted for two days.
At the time, Crete and much of the rest of Greece was battered by heavy rain and storms.
The two survivors reported that the vessel had become unstable due to bad weather and there was no means of getting shelter, food or water.
The vessel had 34 people on board and had left the Libyan port of Tobruk on Wednesday, the Greek port authorities said. Most of those who died came from Sudan and Egypt.
It was initially spotted by a Turkish-flagged cargo ship on Saturday, triggering a search that included ships and aircraft from the Greek coast guard and the European Union border agency Frontex.
Migrants have been trying to reach Crete from Libya for the last year, as a way of entering the European Union. But the Mediterranean crossing is perilous.
In Brussels, the EU’s 27 members on Monday backed a significant tightening of immigration policy, including the concept of returning failed asylum-seekers to “return hubs” outside the bloc.
The UN refugee agency said more than 16,770 asylum seekers in the EU have arrived on Crete since the start of the year — more than any other island in the Aegean Sea.
Greece’s conservative government has also toughened its migration policy, suspending asylum claims for three months, particularly those coming to Crete from Libya.
