Daily Archives for June 21, 2018
Baobab trees have more than 300 uses but they’re dying in Africa
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Aida Cuní Sanchez, University of York
Nine of 13 of Africa’s oldest and largest baobab trees have died in the past decade, it has been reported. These trees, aged between 1,100 and 2,500 years, appear to be victims of climate change. Scientists speculate that warming temperatures have either killed the trees directly or have made them weaker and more susceptible to drought, diseases, fire or wind.
Old baobabs are not the only trees which are affected by climatic changes. Ponderosa pine and Pinyon forests in the American West are dying at an increasing rate as the summers get warmer in the region. In Hawaii the famous Ohi’a trees are also dying at faster rates than previously recorded.
There are nine species of baobab trees in the world: one in mainland Africa, Adansonia digitata, (the species that can grow to the largest size and to the oldest age), six in Madagascar, and one in Australia. The mainland African baobab was named after the French botanist Michel Adanson, who described the baobab trees in Senegal.
The African baobab is a remarkable species. Not only because of it’s size and lifespan but also in the special way it grows multiple fused stems. In the space between these stems (called false cavities) bark grows, which is unique to the baobab.
Since baobabs produce only faint growth rings, the researchers used radiocarbon dating to analyse samples taken from different parts of each tree’s trunk and determined that the oldest (which is now dead) was more that 2,500-years-old.
Bernard Dupont/Flickr, CC BY-SA
They also have more than 300 uses. The leaves, rich in iron, can be boiled and eaten like spinach. The seeds can be roasted to make a coffee substitute or pressed to make oil for cooking or cosmetics. The fruit pulp has six times more vitamin C than oranges, making it an important nutritional complement in Africa and in the European, US and Canadian markets.
Locally, fruit pulp is made into juice, jam, or fermented to make beer. The young seedlings have a taproot which can be eaten like a carrot. The flowers are also edible. The roots can be used to make red dye, and the bark to make ropes and baskets.
Author provided
Baobabs also have medicinal properties, and their hollow trunks can be used to store water. Baobab crowns also provide shade, making them an idea place for a market in many rural villages. And of course, the trade in baobab products provides an income for local communities.
Baobab trees also play a big part in the cultural life of their communities, being at the centre of many African oral stories. They even appear in The Little Prince.
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Cultivating baobab
Baobab trees are not only useful to humans, they are key ecosystem elements in the dry African savannas. Importantly, baobab trees keep soil conditions humid, favour nutrient recycling and avoid soil erosion. They also act as an important source of food, water and shelter for a wide range of animals, including birds, lizards, monkeys and even elephants – which can eat their bark to provide some moisture when there is no water nearby. The flowers are pollinated by bats, which travel long distances to feed on their nectar. Numerous insects also live on the baobab tree.
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Ancient as they are, baobab trees can be cultivated, as some communities in West Africa have done for generations. Some farmers are discouraged by the fact that they can take 15-20 years to fruit – but recent research has shown by grafting the branches of fruiting trees to seedlings they can fruit in five years.
Many “indigenous” trees show great variation in fruit morphological and nutritional properties – and it takes years of research and selection to find the best varieties for cultivation. This process, called domestication, does not refer to genetic engineering, but the selection and cultivation of the best trees of those available in nature. It seems straightforward, but it takes time to find the best trees – meanwhile many of them are dying.
The death of these oldest and largest baobab trees is very sad, but hopefully the news will motivate us to protect the world’s remaining large baobabs and start a process of close monitoring of their health. And, hopefully, if scientists are able to perfect the process of identifying the best trees to cultivate, one day they will become as common in our supermarkets as apples or oranges.
Aida Cuní Sanchez, Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of York
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Lowy Institute Poll shows Australians’ support for climate action at its highest level in a decade
Matt McDonald, The University of Queensland
The annual Lowy Institute Poll on Australian attitudes to the world and global issues for 2018 has been released. Among a series of interesting findings, one thing is clear: support for climate action and renewable energy continue to grow.
In response to the survey’s questions on climate and energy, 59% of respondents agreed with the statement: “climate change is a serious and pressing problem. We should begin taking steps now even if this involves significant costs.”
Lowy Institute Poll 2018
This represents an increase of 5 percentage points from 2017, and a consistent increase in support for this statement over the past six years. It suggests that support for climate action in Australia is bouncing back towards its high point of 68% in the first set of Lowy Polls in 2006.
Read more:
It’s ten years since Rudd’s ‘great moral challenge’, and we have failed it
What’s more, while the federal government doggedly pursues a “technology-neutral” energy policy, Australians don’t seem to be buying it. Public support for a large-scale energy transition in Australia is even more emphatic than support for climate action.
According to the Lowy poll, which involved a nationally representative sample of 1,200 adults, 84% of Australians support the statement that “the government should focus on renewables, even if this means we may need to invest more in infrastructure to make the system more reliable”.
Lowy Institute Poll 2018
This is a staggering verdict, one that casts a shadow over Australia’s rising greenhouse emissions and the looming Commonwealth-state negotiations over the National Energy Guarantee.
Both figures suggest that most Australians are genuinely concerned about climate change, a finding consistent with the ever-growing scientific consensus.
The big question is: will Australia’s political leaders respond to this support for climate action and energy transition by putting legitimate policy in place?
It’s political
Two key impediments present themselves here, both political.
The first is Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s own party. Most governments around the world that have instituted legitimate climate and energy policies have at some stage faced down their political opponents. But the biggest political opponents to Australian climate action are the government’s own internal pro-coal cabal, featuring former prime minister Tony Abbott and backbench energy committee chair Craig Kelly.
This group has fought their more moderate colleagues tooth and nail on climate and energy policy. In the process they have painted even relatively timid policies – such as the National Energy Guarantee – as extreme or fiscally irresponsible. Abbott even recently claimed he had been misled on whether the Paris targets he announced as a “definite commitment” – a 26-28% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 relative to 2005 – were actual targets.
The second impediment to climate leadership is trepidation on the opposition benches after a bruising decade of climate policy wars. Previously, Kevin Rudd’s Labor had a field day with John Howard’s climate inaction in 2006-07, which coincided with the high point of public concern in Lowy polls.
But the party’s current leadership is all too aware that turning public concern into sustained public consensus is tricky. In the face of Abbott’s scare campaign on carbon pricing and an associated collapse in public support for climate action, Rudd infamously walked away from acting on the “greatest moral challenge”. When Rudd’s successor Julia Gillard finally legislated a carbon price, Abbott promised that the 2013 election, which he duly won, would be a “referendum on the carbon tax”.
Read more:
Two new books show there’s still no goodbye to messy climate politics
The new Lowy poll continues the trend of an inverse relationship between climate action and public concern. When the federal government is perceived as doing little (such as from 2013 to now), support for strong climate action has grown. But when the government announces or pursues genuine climate action (2007-13), support has waned.
Aligning policy with politics won’t be easy, and will take real leadership. Will we see it from Bill Shorten’s Labor if he wins office?
Security and economics: grounds for hope?
If we can’t rely on our leaders to lead – or even to respond faithfully to public opinion and scientific consensus – is there any hope for strong climate policy in Australia? There is, and it’s in some strange places.
When we think of concerns that might stymie action on issues like climate change, we might think of factors such as national security or economic growth. But in Australia and elsewhere, these concerns are arguably beginning to drive calls for climate action.
In May, a Senate inquiry into the national security implications of climate change concluded that it represents a clear and present danger to Australian security. The Lowy poll suggests that the public endorses this sentiment – Australians ranked climate change as a more pressing threat than cyber attacks, foreign interference, or the rise of China.
Read more:
Senate report: climate change is a clear and present danger to Australia’s security
While some Australian politicians are steadfast in their support for coal, despite the questionable economics, mainstream financial institutions and even energy companies like AGL are shifting away from fossil fuels. Far from economic considerations preventing climate action, as they seemed to in the 1990s, the economy might just be starting to drive that action.
The climate message, in short, seems to be reaching the Australian people. But will it get to those we’ve elected to represent us?
Matt McDonald, Associate Professor of International Relations, The University of Queensland
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Kevin's Walk on the Wild Side 