Sons of David Foundation on Paulownia

Geoengineering: Can Humans Reverse Climate Change?

2010-06-15T16:14:00.001-04:00

by: Jasmine Greene

Tags: paulownia, New Era Farms, ENOCIS, biochar, reforestation Geoengineering techniques have been around since 1965 when scientists suggested spreading reflective material over the ocean to bounce back 1% sunlight back to space [Source: Scientific America]. Unfortunately this idea was complete bunk, but Geoengineering has been gaining traction recently due to rising temperatures. There are currently two different geoengineering techniques: solar radiation management and carbon sequestering.

Solar radiation management, while potentially the fastest way to cool the planet, also is temporary and could potentially have many side effects. One of the proposals currently being discussed is the creation of manmade volcanic eruptions. Sulfide gases would be injected into the stratosphere every one to four years, providing the earth with a “grace period” of up to 20 years before major cutbacks in greenhouse gas emissions would be required [Source: UCAR]. Unfortunately, this technique could thin the ozone layer if enough aerosol is injected into polar stratospheric clouds. Other negative effects include changing weather patterns, drought, acid rain and respiratory problems in humans. If done properly, however, this technique could potentially drop average temperatures 0.6 degrees Celsius [Source: 21st Century Challenges]. A less risky solar radiation management plan involves whitening of marine clouds. Ocean spray is released into the atmosphere to increase the reflectiveness of clouds. The extra changes the size of the water particles in existing clouds, making them whiter. This technique can be stopped at any time and is part of the natural process of "ocean spray". It can be deployed quickly and rolled out cheaply and effectively, though it could potentially interfere with wind and weather patterns [Source: Guardian]. This problem also does not address ocean acidification or ways to actually decrease the amount of CO².

While solar radiation management only looks at decreasing overall temperature, carbon sequestration looks for ways to decrease overall CO² levels. Iron deposition into the ocean is one method of carbon sequestration. The iron encourages phytoplankton growth, which removes carbon from the atmosphere, potentially on a permanent basis. While this sounds promising, there is no way to predict how this could affect marine life and nutrient balance in the ocean and could lead to poisonous algae spread [Source: Spiegel]. There are two methods of geoengineering that do not have harmful side effects:reforestation/afforestation and biochar. Reforestation is the process of replanting trees in cleared areas and afforestation is planting trees in areas that were never forest or haven't been for years. Currently, deforestation accounts for 25% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions [Source: Monga Bay]. While planting trees would help to decrease the amount of CO2, the time it takes for trees to regrow and biomass to rebuild is significant. Reforestation could be used alongside biochar. Biochar is charcoal made through pyrolysis of biomass, which is then buried and mixed with normal soil. Not only does it make the soil fertile, it holds potential for long-term carbon storage, possibly for millennia. Craig Sams, founder of Carbon Gold, believes biochar could potentially reduce CO² levels to pre-industrial levels by 2050 if it were used in 2.5% of the world's agricultural fertilizer [Source: Popular Mechanics]. Biochar is easily measured, making it great to figure out effectiveness of its carbon sequestration and it is at much lower risk of returning to the atmosphere than living organisms since it is mainly inert [Source: Treehugger].

While many of the "quick-fix" geoengineering proposals have many negative side effects, they are mostly presented in worst-case scenario and are generally temporary. The more long-term solutions like reforestation and the usage of biochar may work better, but it takes longer to see the effects. Either way, no geoengineering technique will be effective if the average global carbon emission does not decrease.

One program using the model of reforestation and biochar is the Enoch Olinga College (ENOCIS) agricultural extension program “New Era Farms” in Panama dedicated to using paulownia to teach peoples oof extreme poverty alternate income sources for their farms.

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Study Finds Reforestation May Lower the Climate Change Mitigation Potential of Forests

2010-06-02T12:15:00.001-04:00

Tags: carbon, ecosystem, forest, plantation, reforestation, soil, paulownia, Panama, New Era Farms, afforestation, biomass Scientists at the University of Oklahoma and the Fudan University in Shanghai, China, have found that reforestation and afforestation - the creation of new forests - may lower the potential of forests for climate change lessening.

Yiqi Luo, professor of ecology in the OU College of Arts and Sciences Department of Botany and Microbiology, and Changzhang Liao, Bo Li and Changming Fang, professors of ecology in the Fudon University Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, examined whether plantations have the same ecosystem carbon stock as natural forests.

By synthesizing 86 experimental studies between plantations and their natural forest counterparts, Luo and colleagues found plantations substantially reduce carbon stock in ecosystems in comparison with natural forests.

'That decrease in ecosystem carbon stock should be accounted for, together with other forest products such as the harvested wood, when the total mitigation of reforestation is evaluated,' said Luo.

This study challenges the idea that planting non-native or native-improved growth species on historical forest land yields greater carbon accumulations rates. They argue against the replacement of natural forests by reforestation, also known as plantations, to help stave off climate change.

Plantations established on non-forested fields such as agricultural lands do help with the control of carbon emissions; however, converting farmland to forests decreases the amount of carbon absorbed by the soil. Another form of gas, methane, also is affected by the conversion. Converted soil loses 80 percent of capability to degrade methane as compared to natural forests when it is developed as a plantation.

To minimize negative effects of plantation, appropriate forest management practices need to be adopted. Site preparation without burning, for example, leads to less soil carbon loss than that with burning. To avoid ecosystem degradation associated with plantations, restoration measures need to be implemented to engineer ecosystems toward their natural potentials.

'The shifts from natural forests to plantations can also generate other ecological problems,' writes Luo. 'For example, soil bulk density, representing the degree of soil compaction, increases, possibly leading to limitation of rooting systems and destruction of soil structure in plantations. Additionally, plantations decrease stream flow.

'On the positive side, plantations can provide commodities for human needs (e.g., timber, biomass). Therefore, we are now facing a great challenge of developing a management policy for plantation practice that minimizes their negative impacts on ecosystems but maximizes their commodity values.'

One project using these techniques in Panama is New Era Farms, the agricultural extension program of the Enoch Olinga College (ENOCIS). To read more about their reforestation efforts with paulownia refer to www.paulownianow.org or to invest in this type of program you can read www.panampro.com

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Long-distance seed dispersal and hunting, an interview with Kimberly Holbrook

2010-05-24T18:11:00.001-04:00

Jeremy Hance May 24, 2010

Tags: biodiversity, toucan, nutmeg, rainforest, Kimberly Holbrook, New Era Farms, paulownia

As we are leaving the week focusing on biodiversity and the rapidly increasing speed of the extinction of the species, it may be important to explore the role of diverse species to p`rotect the evironment. Scientists are just beginning to uncover the complex relationship between healthy biodiverse tropical forests and seed dispersers—species that spread seeds from a parent tree to other parts of the forest including birds, rodents, primates, and even elephants. By its very nature this relationship consists of an incredibly high number of variables: how abundant are seed dispersers, which animals spread seeds the furthest, what species spread which seeds, how are human impacts like hunting and deforestation impacting successful dispersal, as well as many others. Dr. Kimberly Holbrook has begun to answer some of these questions.

Performing her Masters works in Cameroon, Holbrook explained in an interview leading up to the 5th Frugivore and Seed Dispersal International Symposium, how she discovered that African forest hornbills spread seeds much further than expected.

"They have very large home ranges that varied between 925 hectares to more than 4,000 hectares. These home ranges are much larger than those reported for other African avian frugivores as well as all earlier estimates of African hornbill home ranges," Holbrook says, adding that "these two species of forest hornbill engage in landscape-scale movements travelling up to 290 kilometers over a two to three month period."

These findings are important because they show that hornbills are capable of carrying seeds incredible distances—i.e. long-distance dispersal—from parent trees, aiding forest diversity by carrying species to new areas. Think of the hornbills as the boats which carried the Polynesians from one far-flung island to another: without birds or other long distance dispersers a tree species could become stuck in an ecosystem 'island'.

"Long-distance dispersal is also fundamental to the spread and survival of plant populations and contributes to gene flow between populations," explains Holbrook. "Another advantage is that long-distance dispersers enable plant offspring to sample larger areas creating the opportunity to escape host-specific pathogens and reduce kin competition. Finally, long-distance dispersers may facilitate arrival of rare species and colonization to gaps, thus helping contribute to forest regeneration." Holbrook believes African hornbills travel such distances in order to follow fruiting trees.

On the other side of the world, Holbrook studied how human impacts affect seed dispersers and, in turn, the entire forest, including our impact on long-distance dispersals.

"In Ecuador I studied fruit removal and effective dispersal (or recruitment) distances at two sites that differed in hunting pressure. In the site with high hunting pressure, I found that significantly fewer numbers of large frugivores were visiting fruiting trees and that overall fewer seeds were removed from trees based upon seed trap data," Holbrook says.

She also found evidence that seeds traveled twice as far in the non-hunted sites, showing that intensive hunting targets the large fruit-eating species, such as big birds and primates, which are capable of carrying seeds the furthest.

"Seed dispersal is one of the many very important ecological processes that not only impact the ecology of forests and dispersers, but also the evolutionary relationships that exist there. For approximately 60-90 percent of tropical woody plant species, seed dispersal is a critical service essential for spread and survival," Holbrook says.

Despite the complexities of seed dispersal ecology, the lesson is quite simple: without seed dispersers, and especially long-distance marathon dispersers, the structure of the forest will change forever.

In a May 2010 interview with Kimberly Holbrook about the ecology of seed dispersal, the increasing importance of hornbills and toucans, the difficulties of estimating an economic value for seed dispersal, and human how hunting and deforestation impact successful dispersal.

How did you become interested in rainforest ecology?

Kimberly Holbrook: I first became interested in tropical forest ecology when I travelled for a year in Southeast Asia, India, and China. My first view of a rainforest was while travelling by ship up the west coast of Sumatra. I was completely captivated by the apparent diversity and complexity of the forest. Upon finishing my undergraduate degree, I took a volunteer position working with hornbills in Cameroon where I had my first opportunity to learn about the importance of ecological relationships in tropical forests. Given my interests in birds, plants, and seed dispersal, it made perfect sense to pursue plant-animal interactions in the tropics.

Any advice for students interested in studying rainforests?

Kimberly Holbrook: My first bit of advice is to go to the rainforest!! Get a job—even if it is to volunteer—or take a tropical ecology field course so you can have an idea of what the environment is like. It will also give you a chance to start thinking about the kinds of questions you might develop as a student. I think that the best way to find out what kinds of organisms and ecological interactions are most interesting is through direct experience.

Seed dispersal is one of the many very important ecological processes that not only impact the ecology of forests and dispersers, but also the evolutionary relationships that exist there. For approximately 60-90% of tropical woody plant species, seed dispersal is a critical service essential for spread and survival. For countless animal species, tropical tree fruits provide the necessary food and nutrition to survive and reproduce. Figs, for example, are especially important in providing food, often during non-fruiting seasons when other food sources are unavailable or much reduced. Other fruits such as those in the Myristicaceae (nutmegs) and Lauraceae (avocados) families provide high quality lipid-rich nutrition, crucial for many rainforest animals.

What is the 'seed shadow'? How do you determine this for fruit-eating species like hornbills?

Kimberly Holbrook: The seed shadow is the spatial distribution or pattern of seeds that are dispersed from fruiting plants. Determining where in the landscape that the next generation will establish, the seed shadow can vary greatly depending on the dispersal mechanism that a particular plant species relies upon. Technically, a seed shadow is a representation of the dispersal pattern generated by all visiting frugivores. To determine a specific frugivore-generated seed shadow, as I have done with hornbills and toucans, you would need to collect data on animal movements and on seed retention times. Animal movement patterns are usually estimated using radio telemetry and seed retention can be calculated with captive feeding trials where regurgitation and/or defecation times are measured. These two types of data are then combined to tell us the probability of the frugivore dispersing a seed to a particular distance. The result is a two dimensional curve showing probability of seed deposition plotted against distance dispersed.

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Collapsing Biodiversity is a 'Wake-up Call for Humanity'

2010-05-11T09:47:00.001-04:00

Jeremy Hance
mongabay.com
May 10, 2010

Tags: paulownia, Panama, New Era Farms, ENOCIS, biodiversity, global warming A joint report released today by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the UN Environment Program (UNEP) finds that our natural support systems are on the verge of collapsing unless radical changes are made to preserve the world's biodiversity. Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Ahmed Djoghlaf, called the bleak report "a wake-up call for humanity."

The report is the third edition of the Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO-3). Employing scientific assessments and 110 government reports, the report confirms that governments around the world have failed in their 2002 pledge to reduce biodiversity loss by this year. Instead, the five biggest causes behind biodiversity loss—habitat destruction, over-exploitation of resources, pollution, invasive species, and climate change—have either worsened or stayed the same.

"We need a new vision for biological diversity for a healthy planet and a sustainable future for humankind," Secretary-General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, said.

In addition the report warns that several ecosystems are heading toward tipping points from which they may never recover. Due to a combination of climate change, deforestation, and fires, the Amazon rainforest may change irrevocably; while coral reefs are being pounded by overfishing, warmer waters, and ocean acidification; finally freshwater ecosystems like lakes and rivers are losing biodiversity and abundance due to nutrient runoff.

"Business as usual is no longer an option if we are to avoid irreversible damage to the life-support systems of our planet," Djoghlaf said.

Officials are increasingly comparing the current biodiversity crisis to the global economic meltdown of 2008-2009, stating that while governments moved quickly to tackle the economic crisis they have responded languidly to the many threats to the world's environmental systems. These systems underpin the human economy by providing food, clean water, pollination, pest control, buffers from natural disasters, medicine, and carbon sequestration to name a few of their natural goods, known to researchers as 'ecosystem services'.

"For a fraction of the money summoned up instantly to avoid economic meltdown, we can avoid a much more serious and fundamental breakdown in the Earth’s life support systems," write the report's authors.

Yet, Achim Steiner, the Executive Director of the UNEP, says that "many economies remain blind to the huge value of the diversity of animals, plants and other life forms and their role in healthy and functioning ecosystems from forests and freshwaters to soils, oceans and even the atmosphere."

The report calls on governments to begin considering biodiversity when taking action. Governments should directly address the causes behind biodiversity loss including consumption, demographic changes, and trade. Ending harmful subsidies is also suggested.

"To tackle the root causes of biodiversity loss, we must give it higher priority in all areas of decision-making and in all economic sectors," says Ban Ki-Moon.

Ending biodiversity loss will help in the fight against poverty and hunger, while improving human health, security, and wealth for the current and future generations, according to the report.

The report will be a focal point for the Nagoya Biodiversity Summit in October, which will be attended by all 193 parties of the CBD. One of the world's largest economies, the United States, is not a member. The only other political entities that have not ratified the treaty are the Vatican and Andorra.

In spite of the report, business continues as usual worldwide with, for example, New Zealand attempting to push through a plan to allow mining in protected areas; US congress proposing to give 85,000 acres of old-growth temperate rainforest to a logging company in Alaska; Brazil moving ahead on its controversial Belo Monte dam that would flood 500 square miles of rainforest; and Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) failing to protect a single marine species in its most recent meeting.

"Humanity has fabricated the illusion that somehow we can get by without biodiversity or that it is somehow peripheral to our contemporary world: the truth is we need it more than ever on a planet of six billion heading to over nine billion people by 2050," says Steiner.

(05/04/2010) Most people who are trying to change the world stick to one area, for example they might either work to preserve biodiversity in rainforests or do social justice with poor farmers. But Dr. Ivette Perfecto was never satisfied with having to choose between helping people or preserving nature. Professor of Ecology and Natural Resources at the University of Michigan and co-author of the recent book Nature’s Matrix: The Link between Agriculture, Conservation and Food Sovereignty, Perfecto has, as she says, "combined her passions" to understand how agriculture can benefit both farmers and biodiversity—if done right.

Similar to this effort is The Enoch Olinga College (ENOCIS) Panama project New Era Farms located in the Republic of Panama which reforests with paulownia and teaches peoples of extreme poverty alternate uses of their farms to increase their income. For more information on this project you might read www.paulownianow.org

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Second Annual Forest Carbon Offsetting Report Results

2010-05-08T10:49:00.001-04:00

Tags: Carbon Offsets, Climate, Forestry, paulownia, Panama, New Era Farms, reforestation, carbon credits Climatebiz and EcoSecurities

A source in DUBLIN, Ireland has stated — when it comes to purchasing carbon offsets, a growing number of companies are thinking -- and acting -- about forestry projects as a desirable type of offset to invest in.

The results come from the second annual Forest Carbon Offsetting Report, produced by EcoSecurities with Conservation International, The Climate, Community & Biodiversity Alliance, ClimateBiz and the Norton Rose Group.

The report, which focuses on corporations' attitudes towards carbon offsets from forestry projects, found positive attitudes toward forest offset projects from 80 percent of respondents, up from 58 percent in 2009.

"Forestry has always been at the center of international climate change negotiations," said Paul Kelly, the CEO of EcoSecurities. "It's hugely encouraging to see that despite the lack of clarity which still surrounds impending regulation the majority of survey respondents have a very positive attitude to forestry and are actively seeking ways to reduce GHGs and mitigate climate change through forest carbon offsets."

Some of the key findings include:

Positive attitudes towards forest carbon offsetting have increased in the past year, with nearly 80% of respondents having a ‘positive’ or ‘very positive’ attitude compared to only 58% in 2009;

In particular, the most significant change in attitude was from Europe where 84% of participants claim to have a ‘positive’ or ‘very positive’ attitude compared to 36% in 2009;

Participants highlighted the most important factor when purchasing forest carbon offsets are carbon standards (89%), closely followed by project location (84%), project type (80%) and the projects’ ability to generate additional community and biodiversity benefits (83% & 77% respectively);

Reforestation with native species (89%) and avoided deforestation (78%) were rated the most desirable types of forestry project;

South America (74%) was the most sought-after region from which to purchase forest carbon credits;

The Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) and Climate, Community & Biodiversity (CCB) Standards were the two most popular carbon standards (73% and 64% respectively).

"Forestry promises to be a powerful and cost-effective tool in the fight against climate change," said ClimateBiz Managing Editor, Matthew Wheeland. "Corporate offset buyers recognise this potential, and show little sign of declining enthusiasm for forestry, despite the regulatory uncertainty."

"Many of these findings accord with our experience of what is happening on the ground with early stage investment in this important sector," said Andrew Hedges, a partner at the Norton Rose Group, adding, "particularly the emergence of VCS and CCBA as the preferred combination of standards."

EcoSecurities, Conservation International, Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA), ClimateBiz and the Norton Rose Group collaborated to find out what more than 157 global, multinational and regional organizations think about forestry and forest carbon offsetting projects.

The findings come at an important time for the Carbon offset market, and are particularly relevant to New Era Farms as they are developing forestry Carbon offset projects in Central America. For more information on carbon credit investment and how to spot a scam you might refer to PanAmerican Properties web site www.paulowniapanama.org

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Carbon Offset – A Great Method to Save the Environment

2010-04-15T10:46:00.002-04:00

January 29, 2010 by Grace Carter

Tags:Tags: reforestation, paulownia, carbon credits, carbon offsets, carbon footprint, Kyoto ProtocolAs the planet reels under increasing levels of environmental pollution and global warming, carbon offset is acting as a savior by incentivizing firms and governments to cut their carbon emissions.

The release of deadly greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is counter balanced by the carbon offset concept through the use of renewable and cleaner energy sources, reforestation schemes and many other green initiatives. The greenhouse gas emission limits for developed and developing nations are governed by the Kyoto Protocol, an internationally accepted pact, which was signed in 2005 by most nations of the world.

The Protocol makes it mandatory for industries emitting above the allowed limit of carbon dioxide to bring down their emissions to safe levels, or they should buy carbon credits certificates which can be traded in the market, or alternatively pay a penalty for the emissions, which is referred to as carbon tax. Carbon credits, which are older than carbon offset, are extremely popular and economical alternatives for businesses, with one credit allowing the buyer to release one ton of carbon dioxide into the environment. Large organizations are catching up with the global carbon-neutral campaign and buying carbon credits to impress customers, investors and corporate partners.

Another novel method, carbon offset, has paved the way for an excellent economic opportunity, particularly in the developing countries, as the scheme provides smooth financing for eco-friendly projects that are designed to help decrease the overall carbon footprint in the world. It helps in encouraging alternative and renewable energy choices like wind energy, solar power etc and other environment conservation projects like reforestation.

Even common people are increasingly making use of the carbon offset scheme to decrease their carbon footprint and are advocating this innovative way to others as well. Buying carbon offset is straightforward and can be conveniently executed on the internet through one of the many carbon offset provider websites; however, it should be ensured that your money is making real influence through good projects.

You may also consider investing in carbon offset reforestation programs. Paulownia is one of the better trees for carbon capture. Reduce your carbon footprint with every tree you plant and increase your wealth too. With an extraordinary growth rate and huge air filtering leaves that convert carbon into oxygen at a higher rate than almost any other tree, Royal Empress Trees are rapidly becoming an important part of the solution to reducing our impact on the Earth. Paulownia trees are your best choice for a fast growing, beautiful tree that is unsurpassed in it's ability to help our environment simply by growing. For more information on paulownia you might read www.paulownianow.org and information on carbon offset investing www.paulowniapanama.org

However, we must keep in mind that buying carbon offset does not absolve us of our responsibilities, and that all of us can play a significant role in decreasing our carbon footprints by making small changes to our everyday lives. Minor steps like switching off electrical devices and appliances when not in use, replacing fossil fuels by renewable fuels like biodiesel, and using LED lighting and low-energy bulbs can actually help a lot in reducing overall emissions.

Carbon offset is yet to find its place in an average person\’s vocabulary. Mass awareness on the subject through extensive education is required to bring us some steps closer to a clean and green environment.

For more information on paulownia carbon offsets you may read www.paulowniapanama.org

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Intercropping with Paulownia - the "Wonder Tree"

2010-04-05T11:58:00.001-04:00

Tags: paulownia, intercropping, wheat, corn, rice, sweet potatoes, timber, green fertilizer, fodderIntroduction

In many Third World countries, the depletion of native forests coupled with the increased demand for timber and fuel is creating serious environmental, economic and social problems. One strategy that deals with this situation is to encourage rural people to integrate trees within existing farming systems.

In China, the 11 species of Paulownia have been used with great success in agroforestry programs. Some two million hectares of farmland have been planted with Paulownia, helping to alleviate the chronic shortage of timber, fuelwood, and animal fodder, and at the same time increasing agricultural production and improving soil conservation. The lessons learned concerning the successful use of Paulownia in China can benefit many other countries facing similar problems of competing priorities between agriculture and wood production.

Scientists at the Chinese Academy of Forestry (CAF) have been studying Paulownia since 1959, and have developed and distributed several improved varieties to farmers and organizations in China and in other countries. IDRC began financing CAF research back in 1982. Then, with Centre funding in 1991, the International Farm Forestry Training Centre (INFORTRACE) was established as part of the CAF as a centre of excellence for agroforestry and integrated rural development. Over the years, China has become a global leader in agroforestry research. The benefits of Paulownia trees are numerous:

They are adaptable. They grow on flat or mountainous land, in various types of soil, including rich humus soil in temperate areas, dry poor soil, rich forest soil, and light clay soil in the subtropics, laterite soil in the tropics, and dry steppes. In general, Paulownia is suitable for planting in deep soil that is loose, well-aerated, and fed by underground water at a level below two meters;

Paulownia also adapts to a variety of climates, from warm and temperate to tropical, and can even withstand temperatures as low as -20° C (different species vary in their resistance to the cold). The mean annual temperature for Paulownia is 13-25° C. Precipitation needs also vary greatly, from as low as 500 mm to a maximum of 2 000 or 3 000 mm annually;

They grow extremely quickly (average growth of two meters per year in height and 4-5 cm around);

They have a deep root system that, for the most part, does not compete with the roots of crops;

Their branches and leaves are sparse, allowing plenty of light to come through;

Intercropping with Paulownia can improve the microclimate by reducing the effects of drying winds (wind speed can be reduced by 20-50% on average) and increasing air moisture, which considerably increases yields of some crops such as winter wheat and millet (provided that suitable crop density is maintained);

Paulownia produces a beautiful, light wood, which is useful for furniture, plywood, musical instruments, and handicrafts; its sale can considerably increase the income of rural people;

Its branches can be used for fuelwood (a 10-year-old tree produces 100 kg of dry branches);

The leaves are rich in protein (16.2%), carbohydrates (9.44%), and minerals, making them ideal for animal fodder and green fertilizer (a 10-year-old tree produces 80 kg of dry leaves per year);

The leaves, flowers, and bark have medicinal properties.

If the trees are used primarily to improve agricultural production, approximately 40 to 67 trees are planted per hectare. Intercropping with Paulownia will increase yields of wheat, corn, cotton, and millet. Crops such as sesame and sweet potato are not suitable for this method and their yields may actually decrease. If 50 trees are planted per hectare, they will produce 20-30 cubic meters of timber per hectare in 10 years, a source of important extra income to farmers.

Paulownia trees can also be planted primarily for timber production, with crops as a secondary activity. In such case, 200 trees are planted per hectare. An initial yield of two crops per year is reduced after four years to one crop per year, but can still amount to some 37.5 tonnes per hectare over 10 years. From 90 to 110 cubic meters of timber per hectare can be produced after 10 years.

Impact

Training - The International Farm Forestry Training Centre has trained more than 240 scientists, land-use managers, and policy makers from a variety of countries in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, in Paulownia intercropping since 1991. Training efforts continue with a workshop scheduled for September 1998 on "Genetic Resources and Cultivation of Paulownia".

Further research based on successes - Building on a long history of agroforestry practice and Paulownia research in China, the Chinese Academy of Forestry continues its investigation into the taxonomy and distribution, tree improvement and selection, cultivation and afforestation, timber properties, pest control, and molecular biology of Paulownia. Some 10 superior clones have been selected and distributed on a large scale throughout the country. Professor Zhu's farm forestry project has resulted in the planting of 900 000 hectares of land with Paulownia, bamboo, Chinese fir, and other tree varieties, boosting annual rural earning by about US $20 million as of 1995.

Prerequisites

Access to seedlings or root cuttings of appropriate Paulownia species for local conditions; training in planting and managing the trees and intercropping techniques. The International Farm Forest Training Centre of the Chinese Academy of Forestry provides training courses for farmers, researchers, technicians, and extension workers.

Potential users

Farmers around the world could benefit from intercropping with Paulownia, especially in areas with timber, fuelwood, and fodder shortages. Paulownia seeds have been introduced in more than 30 countries in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Europe. Considerable success has been achieved in Australia, India, and Pakistan.

Cost and availability

Seeds of different Paulownia species are available from the New Era Farms (see below).

Contact

Paulownia Now

www.paulownianow.org

Resources

From the Chinese Academy of Forestry (CAF):

A 27-minute film in English entitled Paulownia in China has been produced by the Chinese Agricultural Studio.

Agroforestry Systems in China. 1991. Chinese Academy of Forestry and IDRC. 216 pp. Models, development, research, and experiences of agroforestry in tropical, subtropical, temperate, and semi-arid regions in China.

From the IDRC Web site:

Agroforestry Systems in China. 1991. Published jointly by the Chinese Academy of Forestry and the International Development Research Centre. Available at: http://archive.idrc.ca/library/document/090916/

Paulownia in China: Cultivation and Utilization. 1986. Chinese Academy of Forestry staff, Asian Network for Biological Sciences and IDRC. 65 pp. Available at: http://archive.idrc.ca/library/document/071235/071235a.htm

Xiong Yao Guo.1990. Final Technical Report of Paulownia Project (Phase II). The Chinese Academy of Forestry. Available at: http://archive.idrc.ca/library/document/086352/086352a.htm

Zhu Zhaohua.1995. (http://archive.idrc.ca/books/738/zhu.html) From, In Person: Portraits of researchers in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. IDRC. 190 pp. ISBN 0-88936-738-8.

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How Will Paulownia Trees Benefit the Entire Global Community?

2010-03-31T10:05:00.001-04:00

Tags: global warming, paulownia, afforestation, reforestation, environment, carbon credits, CO2, ENOCIS, carbon offsetAs the effects of global warming continue to take their toll, the environmental experts are seemingly advising on afforestation as the only way out of the grim situation that we're facing. This is a biological control methodology that does not require a lot of resources to implement and maintain. Planting fast growing trees will restore our forest cover in rapid order, as we have no time to lose. There are several other trees in consideration, but only the Paulownia Tree has so many added advantages to offer humanity and the Earth.

Afforestation has a downside; its opposite is as we have seen is deforestation. We consume more wood than we sustain, and therefore cannot overlook the need for wood in any given case study. So how do we balance between afforestation to cater for the carbon offsets and the same for wood purposes? Paulownia Trees solves this puzzle with all the unique benefits that comes with its inception, we end up having an almost half to half winning situation on both carbon control and wood usage. These fast growing trees supply lumber, pulp and fuel at amazing rates of speed.

Paulownia Trees have a variety of advantages in forestry that covers most concerns mentioned which include, rapid growth that in just one year attains a height of 10-18 feet and within 6-10 years you have a fully grown shade tree that would normally take over 20 years to fully mature. Paulownia Trees have high carbon absorbing rate at 48 lbs per tree, and 13 tons of CO2 in each acre per year. When you cut down any of these fast growing trees, they are able to regenerate from the stump very fast, resuming growth immediately. Other benefits include, fire resistance at 477 degrees Celsius flash point, takes less years to harvest and do not twist or crack.

If we develop a good Paulownia Tree forest ratio that would cut across wood and carbon purification equally and maintain this consistently, then I would say we have the situation under control... although not fully solved. With all these wonderful things about them, we need to embrace this special species of fast growing trees without delay. Through continuing research and education, we would be able to realize the many benefits the Paulownia Tree has to offer the Earth. There may be even more amazing gifts found within Paulownia that we have yet to discover.

Deborah Bartley is an avid gardener and tree expert, who got the Enoch Olinga College (ENOCIS) growing paulownia for peoples of extreme poverty and manages to keep up to date with global environmental issues such as afforestation. To read more about the environmental benefits of the Paulownia Trees or how we are using paulownia in Panama at www.paulownianow.org

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Agro-forestry With Paulownia Organic Nitrogen

2010-03-19T17:32:00.001-04:00

Tags: paulownia, plantation, agro- forestry, agriculture, fodder, green manure, cattleWhen set out in a plantation design, Paulownia are planted closely in rows, and then thinned by the row, over a number of seasons. In the first year of growth, mid season, every second row is harvested as lightweight material for pole constructions and the like.

After having been cut, the stumps left in the ground will re-generate at a remarkable speed. The resultant growth is used as a cut-and-come-again source of green manure or fodder.

Early during the following growing season, the stumps fail due to over-competition from the remaining plantation, mainly this is a light requirement factor, or rather, lack thereof. The leaves are huge. Grazing animals are not allowed into the plantation at this time.

The following season, but later in, once again, the now second row of standing timber (now about 6 inches thick) is harvested. The same process is followed; only, this harvested timber is quite valuable for cabinet making, veneers and such.

The resultant stumps are left in-situ to re-grow. At this size, once cut, the stump releases the majority of its stored nitrogen comparable with the loss of its biomass. This mass release is then taken up by the remaining trees.

Resultant re-growth, although a marvelous source of regenerating green manure or mulch - is more efficiently utilized as standing fodder for grazing animals, which in their turn add manure to the plantation.

For the next two seasons, or until the stumps cease fodder production due to over-competition, grazers are periodically allowed in to feed. Provided there is enough standing fodder, the animals will leave the bark on the timber trees alone, so damage to the trees is negligible.

After the fourth season, provided no inter-crop has been incorporated, grazers can generally be allowed into the plantation, to manage the proliferation of weed growth and add their manure to the system. These weeds tend to be soft due to the lower light conditions, therefore easily manageable by grazing stock. Although the understory does have lower light conditions, the overall effect is more akin to 'park-like conditions', rather than 'rain-forest conditions'.

More secondary rows may indeed be subsequently removed or not, depending on the overall plantation system plan and the quality of the Paulownia timber desired.

For more information on paulownia you may read www.paulownianow.org

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Carbon Offset – A Great Method to Save the Environment

2010-02-26T13:13:00.001-05:00

January 29, 2010 by Grace Carter

Tags: carbon credits, CER, PIN, REDD, paulownia, carbon footprint, reforestation, biodiesel, biomassAs the planet reels under increasing levels of environmental pollution and global warming, carbon offset is acting as a savior by incentivizing firms and governments to cut their carbon emissions.

Learn more about carbon credits and carbon trading and get a deeper understanding on how you can help in saving the environment. Please take the time to read www.paulowniapanama.org

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The Paulownia Tree: Waste Stream & Effluent Remediation Capabilities

2010-02-13T18:49:00.002-05:00

Tags: : Paulownia tree, Waste Stream & Effluent Remediation Capabilities, Dairy Effluents, coppicing, nitrogen fixing plants, commercial timber, environmental benefits paulownia, biomass of paulownia, odor reducing, transpiration, disinfectant function of paulowniaThe following research was compiled to illustrate the ability of the Paulownia tree to phytoremediate extremely high strength waste from dairy and animal feeding operations. As a result, other effluent waste streams such as municipal and residential wastewater can be remediated much easier and more efficiently than conventional animal waste. Paulownia trees possibly provide an alternate method of absorbing treated effluents derived from municipalities and septic tank systems.

Paulownia Nutrient Utilization for Dairy Effluents

Research authored by:

Dr. Ben A. Bergmann, Department of Forestry, North Carolina State University

Dr. Carl F. Jordon, Senior Ecologist, University of Georgia

Overview 1

Paulownia species grow rapidly, utilize large amounts of nitrogen (including other nutrients), coppice (stump sprout) and regrow rapidly, and have a variety of end uses. Large quantities of nutrients can be removed from animal waste applied to Paulownia trees because of their high biomass production and high foliar nutrient concentrations. The coppicing ability of Paulownia eliminates the need to replant for several rotations; a considerable cost advantage over tree species that do not exhibit this trait. The ability to stump sprout prolifically is an asset in systems aimed at removal of nitrogen, phosphorus, and other nutrients via high biomass production because plants may be cut down more than once during the growing season.

A Paulownia tree farm designed for commercial timber production at 1093 trees per acre will absorb 445 lbs. of nitrogen the first year, 668 lbs. the second year (thinned to 546 trees per acre), 735 lbs. the third year (thinned to 273 trees per acre), 804 lbs. the fourth year, 1166 lbs. the five year, 15,291 lbs, the sixth year, 1,964 lbs. the seventh year and 3,052 lbs. the tenth year. In addition the crop of selection to be intercropped with the Paulownia will increase the amount of nitrogen uptake per acre. {i.e. grass (215 lbs. per acre) corn (265 lbs. per acre)}.

All calculations are based on a conservative value of 2% nitrogen in leaves and 0.2% nitrogen in wood. Actual nitrogen removal rates will likely exceed these estimates given in that is has been shown; that Paulownia elongata foliar nitrogen content can be much higher than 2%. (Bergmann et al. 1998, Kasy and Gouin 1996) and that denser plantings can be used. As with any land application system, protection of surface and groundwater quality is dependent on matching wastewater application volume and concentration with the tree species planted, soil type and weather conditions.

The objective is to increase the environmental benefits of the Paulownia uptake application by bio stimulating the lagoons causing them to become aerobic and eliminate the odor emissions. It is further intended to sub terrain irrigate with the lagoon water reducing the amount of evaporation and the possibility of any odor emissions while providing the most beneficial usage of the nutrient water.

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1. Section A, pages 18-19: Bergmann, Department of Forestry, North Carolina State University

Paulownia Qualities

Biomass Production of Paulownia

Biomass of Paulownia is the main component in a PCI (Paulownia-crop intercropping) system. The quantity of Paulownia biomass reflects the productivity and the flow of materials and energy of the PCI system. Biomass production (fresh weight and oven-dry weight) of Paulownia was investigated yearly from one to eight years after out planting, and the total biomass was divided into the following components - trunk (under crown), branches (big branches, medium branches and small branches), leaves leaf blades and stalks), bark, flower buds, flowers, fruits, roots (stock, thick roots, medium roots and small roots, and litter. The result of the biomass investigation is as follows:

Component of Paulownia Biomass

The biomasses of each part in and for the whole plant of a 3-year old Paulownia were ranked as roots, trunk and leaves. After three years, the listing changed to branches and trunk, leaves, roots, flowers and fruits. The root growth of Paulownia is more dominant than of other organs before it is 3-year old. The growth of above-ground portion (trunk, leaves and branches) became faster with age of the tree. The proportion of biomass of each organ to total biomass was 31.9%, 25.31%, 21.32%, 17.19%, 4.27% and 1.4% for trunks, leaves, branches, roots, flowers and fruits respectively. Among which, the total amount of 30.98% of leaves, flowers and fruits fall off as litter. The cumulative biomass of one Paulownia tree at eighth year was 607 lbs. dry weight. Correspondingly, the total biomass poundage per acre for different spacings of 8-year old Paulownia were estimated at 47,806, 23,890, 16,131, 11,950 and 9,561 lbs./acre of 5 x 10, 5 x 20, 5 x 30, 5 x 40 and 5 x 50 respectively.

Utilization of Paulownia biomass

As mentioned above, the biomass of trunk and branch was 53.22% of the total biomass. About 63.5% of the Paulownia biomass can be easily used as timber and firewood. The root biomass was 7% and of foliage 30%. Full use of the foliage will increase the economic value of Paulownia trees. The leaves drop off due to the effects of early frost not allowing enough time for the trees to transfer the nutrient matters from leaves to root for storage. The nutrient status of the fallen leaves is close to that of the fresh leaves. Paulownia foliage can be used and the dropping off causes no harm to the growth of trees. The nutrient analysis of Paulownia foliage shows the presence of eight amino acids and trace elements such as Fe, Cu, Mn and Zn that are important to animal growth.

Paulownia is also a good nectariferous species. There is about 0.0236 g of pollen in a flower, from which 0.0473 g honey can be produced. A standard group of bees can collect 22-33 lbs. of nectar during a flowering season. To sum up, Paulownia has many suitable characteristics, such as fast growth, deep root distribution, sparse crown structure, multipurpose (timber, fodder, manure and nectar sources), use when grown in agro-forestry systems.

Ecological Effects on the Farming Fields

Soil Moisture and its Physical Features

Soil moisture was one of the main factors affecting soil fertility. The parameters related to the physical characteristics of soil moisture were observed because the physical property of soil moisture was closely related to the soil-ventilating feature. The result indicated that the volume weight of upper soil layers (0-8 inches) decreased with increase of distance from the trees.

The maximum moisture holding capacity also increased with the distance from the trees. The volume weight of upper soil layer at 4 ft. to the tree rows was higher than the control (control means without Paulownia-crop intercropping).

Total Nutrients 2

Extensive aerobic treatment will reduce odor from the liquid waste from a confined animal operation. In the process, however, much of the nutrient value will be lost. For example, much of the organic content of manure will be lost as carbon dioxide; nitrogen will be converted to nitrate and subsequently may be reduced to nitrogen gas.

Water Status in PCI System

The soil moisture content of upper layer (0-24 inches) was 24.2% in PCI field and 24.2% in the control field. The content of lower layer (below 60 cm) was 28.7% in PCI field and 29.5% in the control field. The observations match with the features of root system of Paulownia. When the Paulownia trees are planted in farmland, there is no negative interaction between trees and crops in water intake.

Energy Balance and Evapotranspiration of PCI System

Through the systematic observations of total solar radiation, reflect radiation. wind velocity, temperatures (with wet and dry bulb thermometers), soil temperature and moisture contents of different layers in different PCI models, a description of energy balance of the PCI system was worked out. The net radiation and its components in a PCI system decreased when compared with control plots. However, the proportion of heat flux to net radiation was reduced, while that of latent heat flux and soil heat flux increased The ratio of actual over potential evapotranspiration and soil moisture increased, resulting in less water deficit compared to control plots. Paulownia's effects on these parameters depended on the tree density and growth stage, and their relative distance from one another. The modified energy balance was favorable to wheat growth during its heading and flowering stages under any Paulownia spacings, but the effect on wheat growth during grain filling in denser Paulownia spacing was due to the greater reduction in net radiation, perhaps brought about by the protective effects of the fully developed leaves on trees.

Soil Nutrition Status

Organic matter and nitrogen contents at 0-8 inches below soil surface decreased toward the trees. There was not much difference detected in available P, Ca and Mg. But available K was apparently higher within 5 m from the trees than further distance from the trees. Continuous measurements for three years at the age of 9-11 years old showed that there was not much difference in N contents at 0-23 inches below soil surface in the PCI field, but N contents at 31-40 inches below soil surface at a distance of 20 feet from the trees significantly decreased while compared with the control.

This could explain that Paulownia trees utilized nutrients mostly from lower soil layer (31-40 inches). It was also found that seasonal variation of available Ca and Mg was similar with that of the control. At 2 inches from the trees, however, it increased at 0-8 inches below soil surface perhaps due to the decomposition of Paulownia litter.

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2. Control of Odor Emissions from Animal Operations: Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina, page 22

ODOR REDUCTION DURING LAND APPLICATION 3

Land application of manure typically brings about the most complaints. Fortunately, odors from land application can virtually be eliminated by injection or immediate incorporation of the manure into the soil. These techniques also increase the amount of nitrogen and other nutrients available for crop uptake. Unfortunately, injection and incorporation are techniques most easily adapted to liquid manure application. Incorporation of solid manure typically requires another pass with some tillage implement. This is both time consuming and costly but is necessary to achieve effective odor control.

Another aspect of manure application that generates odors is the agitation of liquid manure storage facilities prior to manure removal. Agitation is necessary to reduce the solids buildup in storage, break up any surface crust, and evenly distribute the nutrients throughout the manure. Reports from many livestock producers suggest that some manure pit additives reduce solids buildup in the storage units. Although there is little university research to support this claim, this technique should be viewed as a possible odor control method. Chemical additives also have the potential to reduce specific gas formation such as hydrogen sulfide during agitation. These additives will have an immediate, short-term effect on gas emissions.

More research is needed to determine dosage rates and costs for this technology. The issue of reduction of odors and/or certain gases like hydrogen sulfide (especially in Minnesota due to the state regulatory agency's H2S emission standard) during manure storage agitation is very critical. Weather conditions, primarily wind speed/direction and humidity should be evaluated before manure is land applied to insure minimal impacts on neighbors and the public. The weather least suitable for spreading manure is high humidity and very light winds or clear, calm evenings. This condition prevents odors from dispersing and thus increases the chance of creating a nuisance or receiving a complaint

Chemical Activities of Soil

Enzyme, the biological catalyst extracted by microorganisms in their living activities, can accelerate the reactions of all biochemical activities of the soil. Results showed that at 0-8 inches below soil surface near the tree) showed more activity of invertase, hydrogen peroxidase, etc. which led to the increase of decomposition of organic matter, composition of humus and oxidation of other components to increase soil fertility.

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3. Odor Control for Animal Agriculture, page 2

Paulownia Foliage as Manure 4

The above analysis shows that PCI caused crop-favored changes in soil properties and nutrient status. It should be noted that all the above changes occurred when Paulownia foliage (80%) was not collected from the field. Local farmers usually collect Paulownia leaves for fodder. If all the Paulownia leaves are left in the field as litter, this will lead to greater changes in soil property and nutrition status in PCI system. The experiment of fertilization was conducted using 2.94 tons of dry Paulownia leaves applied to 2.5-acres open field. The result indicated 30.6% increase of wheat yield and 19.8% increase of cotton yield.

Paulownia foliage is a very good resource for manure and fodder. According to a survey made, there were 24 million Paulownia trees in Luyi County of Shandong Province. The Paulownia trees produced 354,000 tons of leaves which contained about 9,310.2 tons of nitrogen, equal to 20,239.56 tons of urea, crude protein 57,723 tons and crude fat 36,679 tons, 23.244 tons of dry flowers were produced which contained about 1.036 tons of nitrogen, equal to 2,253.7 tons of urea and 6,427 tons of crude protein. The total from both leaves and flowers in the county led to 22,493 tons of urea.

Disinfectant Role of Leaf Secretion 4

The aim was to study the disinfectant role of Paulownia leaf and the possibility to use Paulownia trees in purifying air. This study needed high-level test conditions and so it was conducted in laboratory. The experimental results indicated that:

1. The compounds volatilized from Paulownia leaves can kill Tubercle bacillus (with a rate of 100%). Among the 36 tree species tested, Paulownia, Sorbaria kirilowii and Hibiscus syriacus showed highest antibacterial effect.

2. Paulownia had no effect on Staphylococcus aureus, but it was lethal to Psudomanas aeruginosa (38.8%).

3. Paulownia leaf paste had strongest effect to kill flies among the 20 tree species tested.

Portions of the Complete Study were Condensed & Edited for Republication Purposes

____________________________________________________________________

4. Evaluation and Model Optimization of Paulownia Inter-Cropping System-A Project Summary Report,

International Development Research Centre, Page 9

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What Is Deforestation? Be Proactive: Knowledge Is Power

2010-01-24T07:58:00.001-05:00

Tags: global warming, greenhouse gases, CER, carbon credits, reforestation, deforestation, paulownia, Panama Mankind is feeling the wrath of nature. It seems that more and more natural disasters are taking place; and this has led to consciousness about the earth’s resources. Forests are the most affected ecosystem in the planet. This is probably due to the fact that basic necessities need trees as a raw material.

What is even more appalling is man’s desire for wider land areas, so they cut off more trees in order to convert the area into a housing community or subdivision; and an agricultural land or worse, a dump site – this perhaps can be the answer to what is deforestation.

By Definition
By definition, deforestation means the cutting or removal of trees from woodlands or forests in order to convert the land into commercial or logging reasons or for whatever purpose it may serve them. Generally, deforestation denotes the extraction of trees without sufficient reforestation or effort to replant a tree elsewhere to replace the one that has been cut.

Since time immemorial, man has been making the environment adapt to the civilizations’ growing needs. First it was cutting trees down to use for kindling, next it was for shelter, and then for paper and other products. Thousands of forests have been cleared all over the world to pave way for man’s innovations and spatial requirements. It seems that forests are present to cater to man’s needs and whims.

Raising Consciousness
It is human nature to be moved into action when our sense of well being becomes endangered. This is undoubtedly the reason why most people are becoming concerned over deforestation.

The easiest way to make people care is to emphasize the benefits of forests and woodland, and to show how its depletion will radically change our lives for the worst. First off, deforestation revolves around a number of issues but none as totally important as the two key subjects that we must be aware of: the primary concern is global warming or green house effect, the secondary matter is the question of whether the trees are utilized properly and if reforestation efforts are being made.

Trees absorb carbon dioxide, helping reduce the amount of carbon released into our atmosphere. Deforestation kills the trees that help prevent greenhouse effect. Green house effect accounts for the Earth’s over all temperature rises, thus causing bizarre weather patterns. That is why the frequency of droughts, floods, tidal waves, and other natural disasters have risen.

The second concern is that the trees being cleared to pave way for metropolis are simply slashed and burned. Aside from the excessive emission of carbon dioxide brought about by burning wood, there is the apprehension that the trees would have been put to better use providing shelter for the homeless, building materials or other useful undertakings. The subsequent effects are truly devastating. Who knew that deforestation can cause so much head ache?

Yes, who knew? If only people have taken the time to inform themselves then they would have been able to make informed decisions and fight for what is right.

What Can You Do To Help?
Since you are now knowledgeable of what is deforestation, it would be of much help to lead in the initial steps to change. Are you thinking what a lowly individual can do to help? Well, small steps make a huge difference especially when everyone is working at the same goal. Armed with the knowledge of the disasters that deforestation can bring about will definitely make a person regulate his or her actions.

Start by conserving the most basic of household materials like paper towels, napkins and tissue papers. Recycling and knowing how to recycle materials will greatly help find a solution to green house emissions. Next is to be pro active and help educate other people by joining campaign groups who fight against deforestation.

Generally you don’t have to be like a crazy person shouting at the streets and joining rallies, begin by changing your attitude and outlook and then you will see that little things do make a difference.

You might also consider in investing in reforestation projects. One of the most productive is a paulownia reforestation project in Panama which not only helps to save the environment, puts money in your pocket but provides jobs and social development for peoples of extreme poverty. Information may be found at www.panampro.com

To help you decide if paulownia investment is right for you, you might want to read www.paulownianow.org After Copenhagen, the world’s attention has turned to carbon credits and pollution. To see how paulownia is being used to counteract the effects of carbon pollution and excellent informational site may be found at www.paulowniapanama.org

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New and Improved Interior Window Shutters

2010-01-20T07:33:00.001-05:00

With the world’s wood supplies diminishing, it’s important to find a suitable alternative for making wooden items such as shutters that won’t have a detrimental effect on the world’s wood supplies or our environment.

Paulownia is the latest choice for manufacturing interior window shutters, as its ideal for making lightweight yet strong plantation shutters. However, this also has an added benefit, as it comes from sustainable sources. It provides all the benefit of traditional wood, but has a number of additional features which other woods don’t have. In particular its weight to strength ratio means that it makes an ideal choice for manufacturing.

Hard Wearing, Lightweight and Safe

Paulownia is less likely than more traditional woods to shrink or warp. As it is engineered in the manufacturing of interior window shutters, ensuring it is particularly strong, making it ideal to use for large shutters. Those offering Paulownia interior window shutters are able to provide greater guarantees than before, both for larger shutters and also increased folding options. For those want interior window shutters to cover large openings Paulownia is a perfect yet cost effective material to select.

Paulownia is also rot-resistant due to its low moisture content, but most importantly fire-retardant as it ignition point is higher than some traditional woods. This makes it a great choice for use in the home.

Appearance

Paulownia has a similar appearance to white ash, making it perfect to stain to resemble other woods such as mahogany or oak. The grains running through it are straight and easily visible, creating a beautiful texture for interior window shutters.

The Paulownia Plant

Paulownia trees are native to China, although they have been cultivated across other parts of Eastern Asia. The trees themselves can grow up to 25m tall and have flowers similar to foxgloves. In China they have also been used to reforest some areas, and their deciduous leaves appear on the badge of Japans government.

Eco-Friendly

The Paulownia tree is able to regenerate from its old stump, so it can be harvested in a similar fashion to Willow. This regeneration has led to them being known as the phoenix tree. The trees are quick growing, being ready for harvest within 5 to 7 years so that their wood can be used for manufacturing products such as interior window shutters. The tree also has the ability to help poor soil affected by industrialization, as its root systems run deep but are able to deal with contaminants and convert them into something more suitable for the environment. Their large leaves also play a part in the process by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and converting it to oxygen which is then released. An important process when many of our forests that would normally do this are disappearing.

Uses

Paulownia is ideal for manufacturing interior window shutters, which require strength, resistance to warping, twisting, and moisture and yet remain lightweight. Appearance is also important, as those who choose shutters also want to be sure that their product has a beautiful wooden finish whether stained or painted. Paulownia offers all of these yet allow the purchaser to make an ecologically friendly choice. There are a range of things that are currently made from Paulownia, including coffins, furniture and guitars. Its uses are many and diverse, but it makes the perfect wood to choose if you are looking for beautiful interior window shutters.

For more information consult www.paulownianow.org

Under Creative Commons License

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Anti-herbivore Structures of Paulownia tomentosa: Morphology, Distribution, Chemical Constituents and Changes during Shoot and Leaf Development

2010-01-08T05:42:00.001-05:00

Tags: Anti-herbivore defense, dendritic trichome, extrafloral nectary, flavonoids, glandular hair, glycerides, indirect defense, leaf development, morphology, optimal defense hypothesis, Paulownia tomentosa, shoot development, paulownia Panama

Sawa Kobayashi^1,*, Teigo Asai², Yoshinori Fujimoto² and Shiro Kohshima¹

¹Department of Bioscience and Biotechnology
² Department of Chemistry and Materials Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Meguro, Tokyo 152-8551, Japan

Background and Aims: Recent studies have shown that small structures on plant surfaces serve ecological functions such as resistance against herbivores. The morphology, distribution, chemical composition and changes during shoot and leaf development of such small structures were examined on Paulownia tomentosa.

Methods: The morphology and distribution of the structures were studied under light microscopy, and their chemical composition was analyzed using thin-layer chromatography and high-performance liquid chromatography. To further investigate the function of these structures, several simple field experiments and observations were also conducted.

Key Results: Three types of small structures on P. tomentosa were investigated: bowl-shaped organs, glandular hairs and dendritic trichomes. The bowl-shaped organs were densely aggregated on the leaves near flower buds and were determined to be extrafloral nectarines (EFNs) that secrete sugar and attract ants. Nectar production of these organs was increased by artificial damage to the leaves, suggesting an anti-herbivore function through symbiosis with ants. Glandular hairs were found on the surfaces of young and/or reproductive organs. Glandular hairs on leaves, stems and flowers secreted mucilage containing glycerides and trapped small insects. Secretions from glandular hairs on flowers and immature fruits contained flavonoids, which may provide protection against some herbivores. Yellow dendritic trichomes on the adaxial side of leaves also contained flavonoids identical to those secreted by the glandular hairs on fruits and flowers. Three special types of leaves, which differed from the standard leaves in shape, size and identity of small structures, developed near young shoot tips or young flower buds. The density of small structures on these leaf types was higher than on standard leaves, suggesting that these leaf types may be specialized to protect young leaves or reproductive organs. Changes in the small structures during leaf development suggested that leaves of P. tomentosa are primarily protected by glandular hairs and dendritic trichomes at young stages and by the EFNs at mature stages.

Conclusions: The results indicate that P. tomentosa protects young and/or reproductive organs from herbivores through the distribution and allocation of small structures, the nature of which depends on the developmental stage of leaves and shoots.

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Emissions Trading

2009-12-15T08:05:00.001-05:00

Emissions’ trading is a means of achieving environmental objectives at potentially lower cost than the more traditional use of uniform standards on emissions sources. Properly designed emissions trading systems can also encourage innovation.

A number of different types of emissions trading approaches have been used in the United States and elsewhere. The least structured, termed emission “offsets,” involves a reduction of emissions at one place to compensate for increased emissions somewhere else. Such offsets can be between different plants or different sources within the same plant. Offsets can be particularly useful in allowing new or expanded sources of pollution to exist in a region already failing to meet its environmental objectives.

A more ambitious approach, which requires additional governmental infrastructure, is the open-market trading system. This approach allows a pollution source to earn marketable emission rights by reducing its emissions to levels below a regulatory standard or by making reductions in advance of a prescribed deadline. The credits earned may be sold to other sources and used to offset an equal amount of excess emissions. The credits may also be resold or (where allowed) banked for future use. Open-market trading has not been formally implemented in the United States.

Still more ambitious, flexible, and demanding in terms of government infrastructure is a cap-and-trade system, where sources in an area may trade pollution reduction responsibilities among themselves to meet an aggregate emissions cap for a given region. Under this system, the regulatory authorities decide on the aggregate level of allowable emissions for all the parties participating in the program (the "cap") and then it allocates to each party a portion of this amount in the form of "allowances," which are tradable rights to pollute. Once allowances are allocated, parties are prohibited from emitting more pollution than their allocation, unless they purchase additional allowances from another party.

The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) acid rain program, widely hailed a success from both environmental and economic perspectives, is the most prominent example of the cap-and-trade type of emissions trading. Emission reductions are ahead of schedule and the costs are considerably lower than anticipated.

Emissions’ trading has several potential advantages compared to traditional regulatory approaches. Firms are free to use the options they believe to be most cost-effective, and they do not need to seek approval from government authorities or engage in lengthy negotiations about the "appropriateness" of their actions. At the same time, some remain skeptical of emissions trading, on both ethical and technical grounds. One thing that is widely agreed upon is that credible monitoring systems are essential to ensure the environmental integrity of emissions trading regimes.

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PanAmerican Properties on Carbon Credits

2009-12-11T13:09:00.001-05:00

Informative web site on carbon credits and how paulownia is used in reforestation for CER's. There is a glossary of terms on the site & examples of typical documents in the industry.

clipped from paulowniapanama.org

A Mature Managed Paulownia Farm

Everything is always impossible before it works. That is what entrepreneurs are all about--doing what people have told them is impossible.

Paulownia vs. Balsa

2009-08-19T18:24:00.002-04:00

Paulownia Wood... the Cheaper, Stronger Alternative to Balsa Wood

Balsa has been incorrectly considered to have the highest strength to weight ratios of any wood in the world.

Paulownia has been thoroughly tested and found to have a higher strength to weight ratio than Balsa!

Auburn University tested the strength of 18 lb p/cubic ft. Paulownia against Balsa, with an average weight of 10 lbs p/cubic foot.

(See Table 1)

Strength modus of rupture mor (psi)
Balsa	2800
Paulownia	5740
- Source: Dr. R.C. Tang, Auburn University

Some Balsa core material is sliced at 3/8 inch with end-grained material. Paulownia can be cut at 3/16 and offer approximately the same strength and weight. Paulownia offers a space saving benefit, being cut half as thick. There is also a significant cost savings because half as much material is needed.

Lighter grades of Paulownia weigh only 14lbs per cubic foot. This is lighter than many Balsa grades.

When considering the large amount of epoxy that Balsa soaks up, Paulownia gains an even larger weight advantage.

Paulownia is easily carved and can hold nails and screws without splitting. It also provides greater stability and flexibility for making molds and models.

Paulownia Lumber Characteristics

2009-08-09T11:51:00.002-04:00

Tags: paulownia, lumber characteristics, paulownia strength, balsa, aluminum of hardwood, conductivity, fire resistant, insect resistant

Lightweight

Paulownia is about 2/3 the weight of the lightest commercial wood grown in the US. It weighs an average of 14 to 19 lbs per cubic foot. Paulownia is almost 1/3 the weight of Oak (44 lbs p/cubic ft) and half the weight of Pine (30 lbs p/cubic ft).

The specific gravity of Paulownia ranges between 0.23 to 0.30 (23 to 30% of the density of water).

Strength

Paulownia has one of the highest strength to weight ratios of any wood.

Strength modus of rupture MOR (psi) of Paulownia is 5740.

Paulownia holds nails and screws well and does not require pilot holes to be drilled. In fact both yellow poplar and white pine have proven to split before Paulownia. Flat head screws can be driven flush with the surface.

Plantation grown Paulownia is mostly knot free, making it very consistent.

Workability

Paulownia has been widely used in the orient for fine furniture, musical instruments, carvings and decorative finishes for over 1000 years. It can be peeled for veneer in 1/16 inch thickness and has even been sliced at 1/32 inch.

Intricate patterns can be cut with a jig saw or band saw without splitting easily. Paulownia has been a favorite for many carvers in the US. Furniture, doors and windows can be made with close tolerances. All normal finishing materials can be applied and it bonds well with glue.

Stability

Air-drying takes as little as 30 days. Boards can be kiln dried at high temperatures in as little as 24 hours to 10% to 12% moisture content with no warping. Reported shrinkage from green to oven-dry is only 2.2% radial and 4.0% tangential.

Paulownia remains stable during changes in humidity and experiences little shrinkage or expansion compared to most other woods. It is highly durable and resists decay under non-ground contact conditions. The wood is insect resistant.

Conductivity

Paulownia is a very good insulator. Paulownia log homes are said to have twice the R factor as pine or oak logs. This temperature resistance serves to give the wood a high fire resistance. Ignition temperature is approximately 400 deg. C. which is almost twice many conventional American hard and soft woods.

Attractiveness

Paulownia has a light blond appearance and resembles White Ash. It stains well with a variety of colors and can be made to mimic other woods. Once planed a silky luster is revealed. The feel is also very silky.

For more information on paulownia or to purchase paulownia seeds or seedlings (elongata, fortunei, tomentosa) please refer to http://www.paulownianow.org or http://www.panampro.com

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In US bill, a potential climate-forest model for Europe

2009-07-17T15:50:00.002-04:00

Tags: greenhouse gas, carbon credits, climate change, conservation, reforestation, EPA,Waxman-Markey legislation, Kyoto protocol, paulownia

By Jeff Horowitz

The tropical forest provisions in the recently passed Waxman-Markey legislation represent a rare area of emerging US leadership on climate policy – one that will create a new era for forests, tropical development and carbon markets.

If these provisions are enacted into law and equaled or surpassed by other developed nations, the world can rapidly (and affordability) reduce and reverse deforestation, eliminating the 20 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions caused by deforestation and provide a sustainable route to prosperity for the planet’s millions of forest dependent people.

The legislation bridges a political gap that has long plagued efforts to tackle climate change in the US and around the world: the dispute over whether companies should be able to receive credit for investing in tropical forest conservation or whether efforts to protect forests should rely exclusively on government funding.

Instead of continuing to debate these questions while the planet’s forests burn (300 million acres of forests have been lost since the Kyoto protocol excluded tropical forest protections in 1997), major US environmental groups and companies decided to do something about it – and entered a negotiating process facilitated by Jeff Horowitz, the founder of Avoided Deforestation Partners.

This process yielded a major insight: it’s not a choice between governments and markets. Rather, both government funding and incentives for private investment are essential to end deforestation – and will build on one another.

This insight was embodied in a Forest-Climate Unity Agreement signed by groups and companies across the ideological spectrum, from the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council to the Environmental Defense Fund, Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, American Electric Power and Duke Energy.

With such a powerful alliance behind it, policy makers took note and the Waxman-Markey legislation broadly reflects this consensus. First, it sets aside five per cent of the bill’s emissions allowances to help tropical government’s end illegal logging, conduct conservation activities to which markets may not be suited, and build the capacity they need to meet the legislation’s strict requirements for participation in carbon markets.

Companies can only get credit for reducing emissions from forest conservation once the reductions have already occurred – and either they or EPA has to compensate for any subsequent reversals that occur because of fire, logging, or other intentional or unintentional activities.

In major emitting countries such as Brazil and Indonesia, companies can receive credit only if conservation activities are part of a national plan that ensures a countrywide reduction in deforestation, not just a local one. In the program’s early years, conservation projects run through major emitting states and provinces will also be eligible, as will projects in small-emitting countries that are working to develop national plans for reducing deforestation.

Critically, no conservation will receive credit unless biodiversity is protected, and indigenous and forest-dependent people share in the proceeds. Consider the numbers: by 2015, the combination of the set-aside funding and offsets will generate $12-15 billion annual investment in tropical forest conservation, preventing the destruction of millions of hectares of forest and reducing pollution by a conservatively estimated one billion tons of CO2 a year – equivalent to wiping away all of Germany’s pollution.

Many of these funds will go directly to forest dependent and indigenous communities – and for the first time on a large scale, the quest for a better life will be tied to conservation of the earth’s natural treasures, not their destruction.

The legislation also credits environmentally-sound reforestation and afforestation activities, giving hope that the millions of acres of forests that have already been destroyed might one day approach something like their former glory (and carbon storage capacity).

All this is achieved on an extremely affordable basis. EPA has estimated the bill would be 89 per cent more expensive without international offsets, most of which will be forest based, allowing the US to take on more ambitious emissions reduction targets than would otherwise have been politically possible.

That could be an important insight for European countries and others with stronger pollution reduction targets than the US: although they’re starting from a better baseline, including affordable, high quality tropical forest offsets in their climate policies would allow these countries to achieve even greater pollution reductions at the same economic and political cost –with extraordinary benefits for the climate.

For more information on carbon credits and REDDs and reforestation you may read www.paulownianow.org and www.panampro.com which explains how paulownia acts as a carbon sink helping to restore the environment.

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Earth Day is Upon Us: What Can I Do?

2009-04-19T09:51:00.005-04:00

Tags: global warming, Earth Day, ecosystems, extinction, environment

April 22, 2009, marks the 39th celebration of Earth Day, a time when people around the world hold events to honor our home planet -- and to remind everyone about the importance of our ecosystem. Founded in 1970 by Gaylord Nelson, a former United States senator from Wisconsin, Earth Day has grown into a global event. In 1970, 20 million Americans demonstrated in streets, parks, and auditoriums for a healthier, cleaner environment. This year, hundreds of millions of people in more than 180 countries are expected to participate in Earth Day activities around the world.

How the First Earth Day Came About

By Senator Gaylord Nelson, Founder of Earth Day

What was the purpose of Earth Day? How did it start? These are the questions I am most frequently asked.

Actually, the idea for Earth Day evolved over a period of seven years starting in 1962. For several years, it had been troubling me that the state of our environment was simply a non-issue in the politics of the country. Finally, in November 1962, an idea occurred to me that was, I thought, a virtual cinch to put the environment into the political "limelight" once and for all. The idea was to persuade President Kennedy to give visibility to this issue by going on a national conservation tour. I flew to Washington to discuss the proposal with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who liked the idea. So did the President. The President began his five-day, eleven-state conservation tour in September 1963. For many reasons the tour did not succeed in putting the issue onto the national political agenda. However, it was the germ of the idea that ultimately flowered into Earth Day.

I continued to speak on environmental issues to a variety of audiences in some twenty-five states. All across the country, evidence of environmental degradation was appearing everywhere, and everyone noticed except the political establishment. The environmental issue simply was not to be found on the nation's political agenda. The people were concerned, but the politicians were not.

After President Kennedy's tour, I still hoped for some idea that would thrust the environment into the political mainstream. Six years would pass before the idea that became Earth Day occurred to me while on a conservation speaking tour out West in the summer of 1969. At the time, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, called "teach-ins," had spread to college campuses all across the nation. Suddenly, the idea occurred to me - why not organize a huge grassroots protest over what was happening to our environment?

I was satisfied that if we could tap into the environmental concerns of the general public and infuse the student anti-war energy into the environmental cause, we could generate a demonstration that would force this issue onto the political agenda. It was a big gamble, but worth a try.

At a conference in Seattle in September 1969, I announced that in the spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on behalf of the environment and invited everyone to participate. The wire services carried the story from coast to coast. The response was electric. It took off like gangbusters. Telegrams, letters, and telephone inquiries poured in from all across the country. The American people finally had a forum to express its concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes, and air - and they did so with spectacular exuberance. For the next four months, two members of my Senate staff, Linda Billings and John Heritage, managed Earth Day affairs out of my Senate office.

Five months before Earth Day, on Sunday, November 30, 1969, The New York Times carried a lengthy article by Gladwin Hill reporting on the astonishing proliferation of environmental events:

"Rising concern about the environmental crisis is sweeping the nation's campuses with an intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the war in Vietnam...a national day of observance of environmental problems...is being planned for next spring...when a nationwide environmental 'teach-in'...coordinated from the office of Senator Gaylord Nelson is planned...."

It was obvious that we were headed for a spectacular success on Earth Day. It was also obvious that grassroots activities had ballooned beyond the capacity of my U.S. Senate office staff to keep up with the telephone calls, paper work, inquiries, etc. In mid-January, three months before Earth Day, John Gardner, Founder of Common Cause, provided temporary space for a Washington, D.C. headquarters. I staffed the office with college students and selected Denis Hayes as coordinator of activities.

Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself.

Did You Know There Are Actually Two Earth Day’s?

International Earth Day

March 20 is the International Earth Day, you may say isn’t Earth Day April 22? Well, yes there are two different Earth Days, The International Earth Day on March 20 and Earth Day on April 22. There are different origins and they both started about the same time.

The March 20 observance of International Earth Day started in 1969 with the proposal to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and it was followed by an Earth Day Proclamation by the City. Then in 1971, at the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizations) Conference in San Francisco John McConnell proposed International Earth Day and it was signed by U.N. Secretary General U Thant. To date, a total of 39 world leaders, such as, Yasir Arafat, Yehudi Menuhin, Cosmonaut Anatoli Berezevoi Margaret Mead, and John Gardner have signed leaving space for one more signature.

Margaret Mead wrote an Earth Day Essay featured by International News Service.
This quote by Margaret Mead says it all “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.”

On 1974 McConnell, discussed his Earth Right proposal at the United Nations Raw Materials Conference his with Sheik Yamani of Saudi Arabia, and other leading delegates. McConnell later stated at the United Nations Church Center, “Underlying property rights and sovereignty rights is the fundamental right of every person on Earth to an equal share in Earth’s raw materials and natural resources.”In 2007 Weekly Reader Research surveyed 1,657 students between ages 6 and 18 from schools around the country. The organization found that 64 percent of America's youth have discussed the environment and global warming in class, and a majority (especially girls) expressed concern.

Still, most people are not freaking out over the prospect of climate change, the Gallup polling organization finds.

"While Americans say they are worried about global warming, they also believe the worst manifestations of the problem are a long way off," writes Lydia Saad of the Gallup News Service in her analysis of a poll taken last month.

Gallup asked Americans how worried they are about seven weather events tied to climate change including hurricanes, droughts, rising ocean levels, tropical diseases, and species extinction.

"Generally speaking, not much more than one-third of Americans are 'very worried' about any of the seven effects of global warming measured in the survey," says Ms. Saad. "However, a solid majority are at least 'somewhat worried' about nearly all of them."

At the same time, Gallup finds, Americans by a wide margin – 58 percent to 34 percent – think "the government should put a higher priority on protecting the environment than on increasing energy production." Even though 92 percent think the energy situation in the United States is "serious" (of whom 37 percent say "very serious"), those surveyed favor energy conservation over production by 64-26 percent.

"A lot more people seem willing to go the extra mile, spending a few dollars to help the environment," says Steve Haskins, a Williamstown, Mass., home builder, who's seen a rapid increase in the numbers of requests for sustainable building practices. "Concern about climate is driving it. But it's also cost of energy and cost to heat the house."

Corporate boardrooms are getting the message, too. "There's been a dramatic shift in the business community's attitude toward the environment," says Dan Esty, director of the Yale Center. "Rather than seeing environmental issues as a set of costs to bear, regulation to follow, and risks to manage, companies have begun to focus on the upside, recognizing that society's desire for action on climate change, in particular, will create a huge demand for reducing carbon-content products."

This year, April 22, the annual day to tout personal and community greenness, has a new emphasis for many people: global warming and its predicted effects on Mother Earth.

Around the country and around the world, a batch of recent opinion surveys show swelling public interest in and concern about climate change.

There is "a significant shift in public attitudes toward the environment and global warming [with] fully 83 percent of Americans now saying global warming is a 'serious' problem, up from 70 percent in 2004," reports the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy.

"The last six months have been the most rapid period of change in public awareness and attitudes on climate change that I've ever seen," says William Moomaw, a Tufts University climate expert and coauthor of the recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN-sponsored group of scientists.

Demand for climate-change briefings he's delivered for the past five years have jumped in the past year, says Dr. Moomaw. Audiences who were once polite are now actively engaged.

Do Your Part to Make a Difference!

· Encouraging your family to recycle on a regular basis is a good way to help the Earth!

· Switching to energy-efficient light bulbs in your house helps to reduce the effects of global warming.

· Every glass bottle you recycle saves enough energy to run a TV for an hour and a half, while recycling an aluminum can saves enough energy to run your TV for three hours!

· Turn out the lights when you leave a room - unless someone's still in there!

· Use re-usable containers for you school lunches and snack

· Plant a tree to replenish the earth. I recently visited a huge magnolia tree my grandmother and I planted 40 years ago at our old home. I recalled every detail of that long-ago day and felt a strong connection with the graceful beauty of that tree. If tree planting isn't feasible where you live, consider donating to a tree-planting organization. Sons of David Foundation is a nonprofit foundation dedicated to planting, maintaining, and protecting as many indigenous trees as possible worldwide. Find out more at www.paulownianow.org

Nature restores our sense of peace and allows us to feel life touching us--it soothes and nourishes our spirits and sometimes frightens us with its power. We make this gift available to our children as we teach them to become respectful of the earth, to walk with awareness, to recycle, and to leave no destructive record of their visit. The natural world is our perpetual, yet ever-changing link with the universe. God, nature, and child all share the same space, connected in the powerful web of life. All parts of the web have importance and purpose. Celebrate Earth Day as an opportunity to become reacquainted with our glorious Mother Earth. You and your child will be blessed by the effort.

A Party for the Earth!

Planet Earth has been around for a very long time. Some call the planet "Mother Earth". This is a good name because the Earth provides shelter and food for our survival, just as a mother protects and provides for her children. Even though the earth is tough and sturdy, it is also fragile.

The Earth's "ecosystems" (ekko-sis-tems) help it to stay in balance. Imagine a picture puzzle that has been put together. The person who has the puzzle can dust it off and take care of it and it will be like new for a long time. But if the puzzle is taken apart and put back together too many times, pieces of it will be torn and bent and probably smudged. Some pieces might even be lost, and then the picture wouldn't be the same at all.

When something damages one part of our ecosystems, it hurts the other parts.

When any living thing on Earth is having problems surviving and continuing its species, it is endangered. If the problems are not solved, there is a chance that it might become extinct. When something becomes extinct, it means that it doesn't exist anymore. Over the years, many mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, insects and plants have become extinct. Quite a few are on the endangered list now. Could there ever come a time when Earth becomes extinct?

Earth has always been a natural environment but, through the years, it has had to put up with what mankind's progress has done to it. Factory smokestacks pour pollution into the air; cars and other vehicles add even more fumes into the atmosphere; waste materials get dumped here and there and everywhere; and animals and other living things lose their habitats because construction needs to take place in order to keep up with the needs of a growing population.

We have taken a natural environment and have been turning it into an un-natural one. But we can't stop progress and we know the world's population is going to get larger. However, what mankind CAN do is find better ways to help the Earth survive along with us. We have been depending on this planet for decade after decade and century after century. Now it seems that it is depending on us to make better choices and find better answers. That's what Earth Day is all about. It is a party for Mother Earth. It is also a chance to discover what each of us can do to help her stay strong and healthy.

"Let every individual and institution now think and act as a responsible trustee of Earth, seeking choices in ecology, economics and ethics that will provide a sustainable future, eliminate pollution, poverty and violence, awaken the wonder of life and foster peaceful progress in the human adventure." (Earth Trustee Formula, International Earth Day Site)

“Man is the only species which can save another species from extinction” (David W. Morris)

Forest Fires have become a Wildcard in the Global-Warming Game.

2009-04-11T08:29:00.006-04:00

Dr. Nitish Priyadarshi April 01, 2009 Tags: global warming, forest fires, paulownia, ENOCIS, Enoch Olinga College, reforestation, environment

Imagining Earth without forests is a horrifying picture to conceive. As its knowledge base has expanded and deepened, mankind has realized that forests are extremely important to the survival of humans and other life forms on earth. Yet deforestation in the form of forest fire continues unabated in different parts of the world. According to the World Resource Institute based at Washington DC (U.S.A.), the rates of rainforest destruction are 2.4 acre per second, 149 acres per minute, and 214,000 acres per day and 78 million acres per year.

The forest is also vital as a watershed. Because of the thick humus layer, loose soil, and soil-retaining powers of the trees' long roots, forests are vitally important for preserving adequate water supplies. Almost all water ultimately feeds from Forest Rivers and lakes and from forest-derived water tables. In addition, the forest provides shelter for wildlife, recreation and aesthetic renewal for people, and irreplaceable supplies of oxygen and soil nutrients. Deforestation, particularly in the tropical rain forests, has become a major environmental concern, as it can destabilize the earth's temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide levels.

Besides being the source for food, plants help us in a number of other ways. Animals, including humans, inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide; plants take up carbon dioxide and in return they release oxygen – this exchange is very important. Forests in particular act as a huge carbon dioxide sink. If there were not enough trees to absorb carbon dioxide, its accumulation would make the environment poisonous. Over the last 150 years, the amount of carbon dioxide has increased.

While all living plant matter absorbs CO2 as part of photosynthesis, trees process significantly more than smaller plants due to their large size and extensive root structures. In essence, trees, as kings of the plant world, have much more "woody biomass" to store CO2 than smaller plants, and as a result are considered nature´s most efficient "carbon sinks."

According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), tree species that grow quickly and live long are ideal carbon sinks.An excellent species to serve as a carbon sink is paulownia. It is fast growing, fire resistant and its large leaves can absorb huge amounts of carbon dioxide.The Enoch Olinga College (ENOCIS) is experimenting with paulownia in its agricultural extension center in Panama. They are using paulownia to provide alternate income sources for farmers of extreme poverty.

Forests are carbon stores, and they are carbon dioxide sinks when they are increasing in density or area. In Canada's boreal forests as much as 80% of the total carbon is stored in the soils as dead organic matter. A 40-year study of African, Asian, and South American tropical forests by the University of Leeds, shows tropical forests absorb about 18% of all carbon dioxide added by fossil fuels, thus buffering some effects of global warming. Tropical reforestation can mitigate global warming until all available land has been reforested with mature forests. About 70-80 billion tons of carbon dioxide is fixed annually by terrestrial and aquatic photoautotrophs.

Life expectancy of forests varies throughout the world, influenced by tree species, site conditions and natural disturbance patterns. In some forests carbon may be stored for centuries, while in other forests carbon is released with frequent stand replacing fires.

From the last hundred years forests are being reduced drastically due to forest fire, the most common hazard in forests. Though the forests fires are as old as the forests themselves, but in recent years the incidence of forest fire, either man made or natural, has increased many fold.

They pose a threat not only to the forest wealth but also to the entire regime to fauna and flora seriously disturbing the bio-diversity and the ecology and environment of a region. During summer, when there is no rain for months, the forests become littered with dry senescent leaves and twinges, which could burst into flames ignited by the slightest spark.

The burning of forest trees gives off not only carbon dioxide but also a host of other, noxious gases (Green house gases) such as carbon monoxide, methane, hydrocarbons, nitric oxide and nitrous oxide, that lead to global warming and ozone layer depletion. Consequently, thousands of people suffered from serious respiratory problems due to these toxic gases. Burning forests and grasslands also add to already serious threat of global warming. Recent measurement suggest that biomass burning may be a significant global source of methyl bromide, which is an ozone depleting chemical.

Wild land fires are taking tons of carbon out of storage and feeding it into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, a primary greenhouse gas.

Usually it is cars, factories and power stations that are most often mentioned as sources of carbon dioxide (CO2), a gas which traps heat in the atmosphere. Trees, considered the "lungs of the planet", soak the gas up. But what if they burn?

Trees absorb carbon dioxide as they grow and climatologists see forests as carbon "sinks" - places where large amounts of that element are stored. When they burn, whether in forest fires or as logs in a stove, it is released.

In the atmosphere, CO2 is the main gas which contributes to the greenhouse effect - trapping the earth's heat which would otherwise be radiated into space.

The latest UN report on global warming says temperatures will rise by a best estimate of 1.8 to 4.0 Celsius (3 to 7 Fahrenheit) this century and sea levels will rise by between 18 and 59 centimeters. The resulting hotter, drier summers.

Bushfires that have scorched Australia's Victoria state released millions of tons of carbon dioxide and forest fires could become a growing source of carbon pollution as the planet warms.

A raging forest fire in the Saranda forest, one of the largest Sal forests in Asia, of Jharkhand State of India has become a cause of concern for locals as well as the authorities. According to recent reports large area has been covered with fire. From the last two decades we already are seeing the effects of global warming in Jharkhand State. From last several years Jharkhand is facing extremes of the climate. Earlier thick forest cover played major role in absorbing excess carbon dioxide and balancing the temperature difference. But unfortunately due to deforestation in large scale in Jharkhand, carbon dioxide may have increased in the atmosphere many fold.

During the 1997-98 El Nino 20M hectares burnt. This one event released 2.6 billion tons of carbon - the highest annual increase since measurements began. They were so massive that the output of CO2 from combustion reached 40% of the world total. This happened again in 2006.

Indonesian fires have shown us that catastrophic events in small areas can release vast amounts that have been locked away for millennia.

The WWF said about 10 million hectares of forest were burned in the 1997 forest fires, releasing about 2.57 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, making Indonesia the world´s third-largest emitter after the United States and China.

There has been a four-fold jump in the average number of wildfires beginning, a process that began in the mid-1980s. The total area being burned is six and a half times greater, and the length of the bush fire season has been extended by 75 percent. In South-East Asia, in Russia and in the Amazon the extent of bush fires has increased.

Sources:

http://himachal.gov.in/home/HomeGuards/pdfs/forest%20Fires.pdf

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/greek-huge-forest-fires-could-be-co2-threat/214144/0http://nidm.gov.in/Forest_Fires2_ii.asp

http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0858185.htmlhttp://www.planetextinction.com/planet_extinction_trees.htm

http://72.14.235.132/search?q=cache:

http://redapes.org/news-updates/major-forest-fires-in-sight-as-more-hotspots-detected/

http://www.enocis.org

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sink

http://environment.about.com/od/whatyoucando/a/best_trees.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulownia

http://www.paulownianow.org

http://www.panampro.com

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Biochar: Applying Ancient Knowledge in the Information Age

2009-03-09T08:03:00.002-04:00

Source: Planet2025 News Network Tags: Panama, paulownia, ENOCIS, biochar, Amazon, carbon footprint, environment, agriculture, Chepo, New Era Farms, greenhouse gases, slash and burn, biofuel

Biochar: Applying Ancient Knowledge in the Information Age

Careless development without regard for the earth’s natural balance, has led to potentially disastrous levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Now, that we have to deal with the reality of climate change, we commonly find ourselves looking to modern technology to provide a solution.

NASA has just announced that in January 2009, it will make use of the latest technologies and equipment available to man, when it launches a new mission called the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO). The goal of the mission is to obtain accurate measurements of the level of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere and a more precise understanding of where it is being captured and stored on Earth.

For various reasons, precise information about how much carbon is being put into the atmosphere and where it is being absorbed by natural carbon sinks has been, up to this point, lacking. The OCO will use three high-resolution spectrometers to observe “sunlight reflected off Earth at the precise wavelengths that reveal the presence of carbon dioxide and molecular oxygen.”¹ and will be able to obtain the most precise data on this subject ever collected which should allow them to uncover unknown patterns and cycles in the Earth’s carbon dioxide.

It is true that advances in technology, such as this mission by NASA, can give us the opportunity to better understand the natural carbon cycle of our Earth. Yet, relying on modern technology alone is an expensive and therefore, for many countries, inaccessible route towards solving the climate change problem.

Instead, many experts are pointing to the potential of an ancient, low-tech, carbon sequestration technique once used by the Amazonian Indians, called biochar, that could provide an integrated solution for the current and related issues of climate change, food security, and sustainable energy production.

When trees and other organic materials decay or burn they release all the carbon they had stored during their lifetimes, as part of a carbon neutral cycle. The process of making biochar involves the heating or burning of organic materials (can be waste materials) in the absence of oxygen, a process known as pyrolysis, which results in the production of a carbon-rich, fine-grained form of charcoal that is then buried. The heated, non-oxygenated decomposition that occurs in the “burning” stage, gives off energy that can be used as an efficient biofuel.

This process reduces the carbon that would be emitted by the natural decaying or oxygenated burn of the material by 90%, and stores that carbon in the leftover charred material. Therefore the production of energy in the biochar process goes beyond being carbon-neutral and is actually considered carbon-negative because it takes carbon dioxide out of its natural cycle and sequesters it in the soil, for up to 5,000 years.

In addition, the resulting biochar is extremely helpful when added to soils, because it holds onto nutrients and water. In recent experiments on 10 farms, using biochar as a fertilizer resulted in up to three times greater crop yields than without it.² Biochar is also the secret ingredient behind the famously fertile terra pretta (dark earth) of the ancient Amazonians, that was first observed by European explorers in the 16th century.³ As reported by Reuters “Soils containing biochar made by Amazon people thousands of years ago still contain up to 70 times more black carbon than surrounding soils and are still higher in nutrients”.

The beauty of biochar is that it's a time-tested and integrated solution. Biochar minimizes waste, while producing energy, and sequestering carbon. It has also been shown to further reduce greenhouse gases by decreasing nitrous oxide and methane gas emissions from soil. It reduces the use of fossil-fuel based fertilizers, and increases soil fertility and crop yields. The “slash-and char” method, which involves slow smoldering of farm wastes to fertilize existing plots, could replace the less effective and more damaging slash-and-burn farming technique that generates greenhouse gases and destroys forests.

The main boundary to its use is that it has yet to be proven on a commercial scale. But perhaps that is about to change. Biochar is already being used on a number of small farms. For example, the Times Magazine recently reported on a chicken farm in West Virginia that uses chicken manure as the organic material for pyrolysis, which creates enough energy to run the farm. The farmer is also able to profit by selling the resulting biochar as fertilizer.

Just last Friday, a large-scale biochar enterprise created by British environmental entrepreneurs, Craig Sams, (one of the founders of the popular Green & Black organic chocolate company) and Dan Morrel, (co-founder of Future Forests, the first carbon offsetting company), got its first multi-million-pound investment from venture capitalists in California’s Silicon Valley.

This project will begin running trials with biochar in Sussex and Belize starting in early 2009, and hopes to build biochar into a worldwide enterprise. According to Mr. Sams, who called biochar “a treasure to be buried in the earth”, CO2 in the air could be reduced to pre-Industrial Revolution levels by 2050, if only 2.5% of the world’s productive land would be used to produce biochar.⁴

The ancient people of the Amazon who used biochar techniques could probably not have conceived of the OCO mission NASA will soon undertake, and yet they developed a land management technique that shows they had a superior understanding of the Earth’s delicate balance. Perhaps it is a sign of our true modernity that we are growing more willing to recognize and incorporate ancient knowledge alongside new technologies in our quest for solutions to the greatest crisis of our time.

Biochar techniques are one of the various agricultural processes being experimented with by the Enoch Olinga College (ENOCIS) www.enocis.org at their Agricultural Extension Center “New Era Farms” in Chepo, Panama www.paulownianow.org

By Mallika Nair

Sources

1. Discovery News “NASA Space Probe to Track CO2 on Earth” Dec. 5, 2008 by Irene Klotz. http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/12/05/carbon-dioxide-space.html

2. Reuters “Scientists say ancient technique cuts greenhouse gases” Dec. 5, 2008, by Gerard Wynn http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTRE4B45KB20081205

3. Carbon: The Biochar Solution Dec. 4, 2008 by Lisa Abend http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1864279,00.html

4. The Independent “Ancient skills ‘could reverse global warming’” Nov. 7, 2008, by Geoffrey Lean. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/ancient-skills-could-reverse-global-warming-1055700.html

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THE WORLD AFTER 2020: MBendi South Africa

2009-02-15T05:52:00.001-05:00

In August 2008 I wrote about Wangari on our blogs. I recently decided to expand on that thought process and refocus on her efforts in Africa.

A couple of years ago I attended a stirring speech given by Wangari Mathaai, then little-known Kenyan winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. At the time I thought that the reason she had been awarded the prize was simply because she had founded a women's movement in East Africa which had planted more than six million trees. After her speech, I was little the wiser. It was only when I read her wonderful biography, Unbowed, recently that I discovered the real reason for the prize.

As East Africa's first woman with a Ph D she had taken on a very male chauvinist, highly corrupt political establishment. First she had prevented a major park in the centre of Nairobi being used to build a privately owned office block and later she was instrumental in overturning the sale of a state forest to a developer of upmarket housing. In between she planted trees, uplifted women and fought both the bureaucracy and bad farming practices. For her sins, she was physically attacked, arbitrarily arrested, faced privations in prison, ridiculed in the press and parliament and ostracized. But she persevered and today Kenya is a much greener country than it might otherwise have been.

Her book is really in two parts, with the second part given over to her fights with the powers that be. In the early chapters she paints a beautiful picture of growing up in rural Kenya - the family home and village life but most of all growing crops and vegetables. One thinks of traditional African peasants as ignorant, but they understood the soil and the climate, the plants and the animals, the insects and the old fig trees that protected the springs of gushing water. In a very sensitive way, she also describes her father's life as a worker on the farm of a white settler at the time of the Mau Mau rebellion.

Both parts of Dr Mathaai's book have resonated with me recently as I have contrasted UN forecasts of the world's undernourished growing by 40 million people to 963 million people this year and prices of staple foods up 15% or more in just the last eight weeks with news reports of new agricultural projects being started in Africa. Just a couple of months ago there was the story about how South Korea's Daewoo had been allocated 1.3 million hectares of Madagascar, a chunk the size of a small European country, to grow food for the home country; last week it was a Wall Street banker who had signed a deal with a Sudanese warlord for 400,000 hectares of land alongside the Nile; and this week it was Lonrho taking over a block of 25,000 hectares of sparsely populated land in Angola.

For a couple of years now we have been reading of biofuels projects springing up in Mozambique especially, but also Tanzania. In Sierra Leone, Addax Petroleum, with the support of the national government, is to set up a 20,000 hectares sugar cane plantation together with an ethanol distillery/factory would produce more than 1,200,000 litres of ethanol per year and a 30 MW power plant that would be able to supplement Bumbuna. The project will employ 4,000 people. All across Africa, commercial farmers are growing sugar and tobacco, two of the biggest contributors to health problems worldwide.

As I read about all these projects - and with Dr Mathaai's words ringing in my ears - I find myself asking questions. Why was the land not already being used for agricultural production when Africa is so chronically short of food? Who really owns the land being used for the projects - the national government, the tribe or the individual families living on it? What is going to happen to the people currently living on the land? Will those given jobs really earn enough to live a better life than they enjoyed before? Will the country and community really be better off or is it the offshore investors who are the only beneficiaries? More than anything, I wonder whose pockets and offshore bank accounts are going to bulge even further as a result of these projects?

If all this sounds like just another African bad news story, let me end with a ray of hope. After years of drought and famine, the government of Malawi, against the wishes and so-called better judgment of the donor community, set up a scheme to distribute seeds and fertilizer at subsidized prices to small farmers. The result is that today Malawi produces more food than it consumes and earns foreign currency from exporting to the countries round about. What we really need is for Africans to use African land to fill African stomachs first, then foreign stomachs in exchange for filling the bank accounts of the local farmers who did all the hard work.

Incidentally, if you go searching the Internet for information on the African agricultural sector, you will find there is plenty of information on agricultural aid to the continent, but precious little about who produces how much of what. So our researchers have started pulling together all the pieces of this tricky jig-saw puzzle, starting with paulownia elongata, which you canread more about at www.paulownianow.org. We'll keep you posted as they update more of our pages. Some other useful links to further stimulate your thinking about where the world is going.Tags: reforestation, Africa, Wangari, Wangari Mathaai, Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel Prize, Africa, reforestation, fertilizer, biomass, paulownia

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Planting Trees Saves Cash, Research Confirms

2009-02-05T04:51:00.003-05:00

Emily Sohn, Discovery News Tags: global warming, reforestation, environment, ecology, paulownia, agriculture

Jan. 22, 2009 -- Plant a tree: Save 25 bucks. Researchers in California have found that planting trees in strategic locations around your house can lower your summertime electricity bill by that much or more.

The concept is common sense: Extra shade reduces the need for air conditioning. But this is the first study to use actual utility bills to nail down the details of where trees should be placed to help people chip away at their environmental footprints -- and their budgets.

"Nobody says we're going to cure global warming just with urban trees," said lead researcher Geoffrey Donovan, an economist at the Portland Forestry Sciences Lab in Oregon. "But they're one of the nicer ways of doing it."

For the new study, Donovan and colleague Dave Butry, an economist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, looked at 460 single-family homes in one neighborhood of Sacramento, Calif.

Using Google Earth, the researchers looked down on each house from above. They measured the diameter of all tree crowns in three zones: 20, 40, and 60 feet away from the building, and in four directions: north, south, east and west.

Based on the distances of the trees from the buildings and the sizes of their crowns, they calculated where shadows would be cast at various times throughout the day.

The electric company provided copies of each home's electric bill, while the county gave data about factors that might affect electricity use, including house size, lot size, and whether the house had a pool. A computer model then controlled for these variables to see whether trees had an effect on summertime energy use above and beyond those factors.

The study, in press at the journal Energy and Buildings, found that people used about 5 percent less electricity (about $25 less) during the summer when they had trees within 40 feet of their home's south side or within 60 feet of its west side.

Late in the day, when temperatures are highest and people are more likely to turn on the A/C, trees cast longer shadows, which explains the bigger buffer zone on the house's west side.

These findings gave real-world support for the results of previous, more theoretical work.

Unexpectedly, when trees sat on a house's north side, electric bills went up. The result might be a statistical anomaly, Donovan said. But he speculated that blocked breezes or the need for more lighting could also explain the finding.

Over a 100-year period, the scientists calculated, planting a London pine tree on the west side of a Sacramento home could reduce the house's net carbon use by 30 percent -- half through sequestering by the tree and half through reduced electricity use. Financial savings will increase, Donovan added, as utility companies start charging more for electricity at peak times of day.

It's probably worth planting trees around your home, agreed Jim Simpson, a meteorologist at the Center for Urban Forest Research in Davis, Calif., despite the costs of buying trees and taking care of them. But the specifics of which trees to plant and where to plant them will likely differ in places that are colder, wetter, or otherwise different from the steaming valleys of California.

"In the Sacramento area, air conditioning is a fairly big thing, and we have mild winters," Simpson told Discovery News. "It would be a good idea to do this sort of study in other climate zones where heating is a bigger deal."

One of the fastest growing shade trees in the world is paulownia elongata which can grow an amazing sixteen feet a year offering shade and energy savings in as little as two years. For more information on paulownia you may refer to the web site www.paulownianow.org

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Recent Changes in Panama Immigration Laws Effect Reforestation Visas

2009-01-16T05:18:00.001-05:00

Tags: Panama, Panama Law, Panama Visas, Panama Immigration Law, Panama Reforestion Visa, managed forests, PanAmerican Properties, ANAM, paulowniaThe new Immigration Law of the Republic of Panama, Executive Decree No. 320 of 8 August 2008 which regulates law No. 3 of February 22 2008 has made substantial changes in the requirements to be eligible to apply for a reforestation visa in this country. Section No. 2 of this law on page 22 of the original text which can be read in its entirety in English at the following url http://www.panampro.com/index_archivos/law.htm has increased the minimum investment from $40,000 USD to $60,000 USD and has added an additional requirement of the acquisition of at least 10 hectares of land.

This provision of the law allows both for individual or corporate ownership of the land or an investment of at least 10 hectares of managed forest relieving the investor from the necessity of managing the property themselves and dealing with the onerous labor laws, the social security requirements and the constant holidays which plague the nations development.

However much is to be said about the structure of the law. Projects now need to be registered by ANAM, the country’s National Environmental Agency which hopefully will establish stricter controls and regulation of reforestation in Panama.

This new legal initiative opens the door for better regulation of tax laws regarding reforestation and greater opportunity for protecting our nation’s forests by establishing “Chain of Custody” requirements for these managed plantations. Hopefully it will be the beginning of more selective requirements controlling which species of tree will be eligible for tax exemptions.

One such tree should be paulownia elongata, the Princess Tree, because of not only its high market value but because of the benefits it offers to Panama. Paulownia has a complete growth cycle in 8-10 years reaching the size of native hardwoods in one third the time. Such a growth rate offers potential opportunities to eliminate the crisis of extreme poverty in the rural areas of the country.

Paulownia also offers nutritive value to local fauna and the top soil because its leaves have a 26% protein content and rapidly decompose. Unlike teak and other hardwoods, paulownia creates natural fire barriers during the dry season because its ignition point is 425 degrees centigrade four times that of boiling water.

For more information on paulownia in Panama you may visit our web site www.paulownianow.org or for investment opportunities in managed paulownia forests of Panama www.panampro.com. You may also contact us via email at info@paulownianow.org

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A Comparative Analysis of the Advantages of Growing Paulownia vs.Teak

2009-01-13T10:25:00.001-05:00

Tags: paulownia, teak, Panama, reforestation, environment, ecology, Chain of Custody A few years ago teak was considered the panacea of solutions for socio economic problems in Panama. But, today, the harsh reality of growing teak is widely known. Recognized in many countries as a weed, Panama is one of the few nations in the world that gives tax incentives for planting Tectona Grandis, teak.

It is thoroughly understood that teak damages the environment. The fall of teak leaves is one of the principal causes of severe erosion and fire throughout the country. The high oil content of the tree and leaves is like tinder or kindling for fires during the dry season. When the leaves fall to the ground, they do not disintegrate rapidly and serve no useful function in the forest either as natural fertilizer or feed for animals.

Today there are huge forests of teak all over Panama. Instead of contributing to the nation’s economy, they are actually depleting the national treasury through tax deductions provided to the wealthy. Globally there are more offers to sell teak than to buy.

Many of these stands of teak are more than twenty years old. Why aren’t they being sold? There are two primary reasons: one the price of teak in Panama is not in synch with the realities of the price of teak on the world market and two, buyers today are more informed and are requesting documentation that most Panamanians cannot provide because they have not made the financial investment necessary for this type of venture, instead their interests have been to hide money from taxation. “Chain of Custody” documents are one of the key requirements for selling lumber in today’s world market. This documentation proves that the producer is not damaging the environment or jungle to extract lumber.

Today, there is a new alternative for agroindustry and multidimensional farming. This new paradigm of agroforestry allows for a mix of the traditional with the nontraditional generating more income for the farm and at the same time restoring the ecology of the nation. A study done by USAID/AED “A FINANCIAL ANALYSIS OF SUSTAINABLE CATTLE FARMING SYSTEMS IN THE WATERSHED OF THE PANAMA CANAL” dated June 2005 proves the economic viability of raising cattle with trees. Although the study mentions some species of trees, it does not mention species with high agricultural value. Selecting the correct species will not only serve as a source of income but also function as an integral and important part of the daily life of the farm.

Paulownia could be that species. Paulownia is recognized as the fastest growing tree in the world, the aluminum of hardwood trees. Grown for hundreds of years on the Pacific Rim, paulownia has a greater value than teak on the world market and offers the opportunity to have three harvests in the time it takes for teak to have one.

The paulownia leaves are used in many parts of the world has feed for animals because of its high nutritive value.

With the price of land in the clouds today, farms are smaller and farmers must maximize the economic utility of every hectare. Different than teak, after two years, the farmer can graze cattle between the paulownia trees without damaging them.

Paulownia increases the fertility of the land. The leaves disintegrate rapidly feeding the natural grasses which control erosion of top soil. Paulownia also functions as a natural firebreak. The ignition temperature of paulownia is approximately 425 degrees centigrade. Teak has a flash point of a little more than 100 degrees centigrade about that of boiling water.

All of these elements combined: the world market price, world supply and demand, speed of growth, and a quick return on investment compared to teak, the nutritional value of paulownia as feed for animals, the benefit to top soil as a fertilizer and finally the ignition point of paulownia make paulownia an ideal addition to today’s farms. For more information on paulownia or to buy seeds, seedlings or round poles you may visit our web site www.paulownianow.org or write us at info@paulownianow.org . If you are looking for investment opportunities in reforestation please visit www.panampro.com.

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Women Farmers Toil to Expand Africa's Food Supply

2008-12-26T05:20:00.001-05:00

By Megan Rowling Tags: Bill Gates Foundation, Africa, women farmers, irrigation, technology, U.N. World Food Programme, underserved peoples, education, FAO, fertilizer, paulownia, agroforestry

LONDON, Dec 26 - Like many African women, Mazoe Gondwe is her family's main food provider. Lately, she has struggled to farm her plot in Malawi due to unpredictable rains that are making her hard life even tougher.

"Now we can't just depend on rain-fed agriculture, so we plant two crops - one watered with rain and one that needs irrigating," she explained. "But irrigation is back-breaking and can take four hours a day."

Gondwe, flown by development agency ActionAid to U.N. climate change talks in Poland this month, said she wanted access to technology that would cut the time it takes to water her crops and till her farm garden. She would also be glad of help to improve storage facilities and seed varieties.

"As a local farmer, I know what I need and I know what works. I grew up in the area and I know how the system is changing," Gondwe said.

This year, agricultural experts have renewed calls for policy makers to pay more attention to small-scale women farmers such as Gondwe, who grow up to 80 percent of crops for food consumption in Africa.

After decades in the political wilderness, farming became a hot topic this year when international food prices hit record highs in June, sharply boosting hunger around the world. The proportion of development aid spent on agriculture has dropped to just 4 percent from a peak of 17 percent in 1982.

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called for women to be at the heart of a "policy revolution" to boost small-scale farming in Africa.

Women have traditionally shouldered the burden of household food production both there and in Asia, while men tend to focus on growing cash crops or migrate to cities to find paid work.

Yet women own a tiny percentage of the world's land -- some experts say as little as 2 percent -- and receive only around 5 percent of farming information services and training.

"Today the African farmer is the only farmer who takes all the risks herself: no capital, no insurance, no price supports, and little help - if any - from governments. These women are tough and daring and resilient, but they need help," Annan told an October conference on fighting hunger.

A new toolkit explaining how to tackle gender issues in farming development projects, published by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), highlights the potential returns of improving women's access to technology, land and finance.

In Ghana, for example, if women and men had equal land rights and security of tenure, women's use of fertilizer and profits per hectare would nearly double.

In Burkina Faso, Kenya and Tanzania, giving women entrepreneurs the same inputs and education as men would boost business revenue by up to 20 percent. And in Ivory Coast, raising women's income by $10 brings improvements in children's health and nutrition that would require a $110 increase in men's income.

"The knowledge is there, the know-how is there, but the world -- and here I'm talking rich and poor -- doesn't apply it as much as it could," said Marcela Villarreal, director of FAO's gender, equity and rural employment division.

EQUALITY

Many African governments have introduced formal laws making women and men equal, but have troubling enforcing them where they clash with customary laws giving property ownership rights to men, she said.

Often if a woman's husband dies, she has little choice but to marry one of his relatives so she can keep farming her plot and feeding her children, Villarreal said. But if a widow is HIV positive, she might be chased off her land.

In Malawi, FAO is working with parliamentarians and village chiefs to let rural women know they are legally able to hold land titles. They are given wind-up radios so they can listen to farming shows in local languages and taught how to write a will.

"People continue to think that doing things for women is part of a welfare programme and doing things for men - big investments or credit - that is agriculture, that is GDP-related," Villarreal said.

"Women continue not to be seen as part of the productive potential of a country."

One powerful woman trying to change that is Agnes Kalibata, Rwanda's minister of state for agriculture. She said government land reform and credit programmes specifically target struggling women farmers - many of whom are bringing up children alone after their husbands were killed in the 1994 genocide.

This has helped raise their incomes, leading to better nutrition, health and education for their children, Kalibata said. Women are also getting micro-credit loans, which they use to access markets and cooperatives or set up small businesses, such as producing specialty coffee for export.

"They are not like rocket scientists, they are women from the general population who finally feel empowered that they can come out and do some of these things," explained Kalibata.

In the private sector, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have decided to put women at the centre of its agricultural development programme by attaching conditions to grants. It no longer finances projects that ignore gender issues, and it requires women to be involved in their design and implementation.

Catherine Bertini, a senior fellow at the foundation and professor of public administration at Syracuse University, said aid donors had not spent enough on support for women farmers.

"You can find the rhetoric but it's a limited number of people who actually walk the walk," she said.

Bertini, who headed the U.N. World Food Programme in the 1990s, said policy makers could best be persuaded to focus on women farmers by playing up the economic benefits rather than talking about gender equality.

"You convince people to do it because it's the most practical way to increase productivity and income to women," she said.

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The World After 2020

2008-12-06T10:50:00.001-05:00

Tags: global warming, deforestationMBendi Newsletter: 28.Nov.2008

In our last newsletter, we commented on the energy implications of the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook 2008. The outlook also had much to say about the likely environmental impact of their reference scenario, so I dug through our Signposts for the past three months to see what new evidence there is for climate change. Here's a summary of what I found.

First some new forecasts to set the scene. Ice sheets on Antarctica and Greenland would raise world sea levels by about 70 meters if they melted completely. Fortunately, the UN Climate Panel projects that sea levels will only rise by between 18 and 59 cm this century. Scientists in Japan forecast that peatlands, concentrated in high latitude locations including Canada, Russia and Alaska, could experience a 40% carbon loss from shallow peat and 86% carbon loss from deep peat with a warming of four degrees C.

The IEA reference scenario forecasts that world greenhouse gas emissions, including non-energy CO2 and all other gases, will grow 35% between 2005 and 2030, leading to a doubling in the concentration of those gases in the atmosphere by the end of this century and an eventual global average temperature increase of up to 6°C on today. Separately, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography warned that the earth will warm about 2.4° C above pre-industrial levels even under extremely conservative greenhouse-gas emission scenarios and under the assumption that efforts to clean up particulate pollution continue to be successful.

So, where are we right now? Starting with the atmosphere above us, the UN Climate Change Secretariat reported that emissions by 40 industrialized nations dropped 0.1% from 2005 to 2006 driven by a fall in U.S. emissions. However, 2006 emissions of 18.0 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide were still 2.3% up from 17.6 billion in 2000 and only 4.7% down from 1990 levels of 18.9 billion tonnes. Most of this drop is due to the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, whose emissions have risen 7.4% to 3.7 billion tonnes just since 2000.

The Global Carbon Project reported anthropogenic CO2 emissions have been growing about four times faster since 2000 than during the previous decade. Worldwide man-made emissions of CO2 increased 3% in 2007. The annual mean growth rate of atmospheric CO2 was 2.2 ppm per year in 2007, above the 2.0 ppm average for the period 2000-2007 and 50% above the average annual mean growth rate for the previous 20 years of 1.5 ppm. Atmospheric CO2 concentration was 383 ppm in 2007, 37% above the concentration at the start of the industrial revolution and the highest during the last 650,000 years and probably during the last 20 million years. Natural land and ocean CO2 sinks removed 54% of all CO2 emitted from human activities during the period 2000-2007.

In 2006, China passed the USA, still the leader in emissions per-capita, to become the largest CO2 emitter, and India will soon overtake Russia to become the third largest emitter. More than half of the global emissions come from less developed countries. However, developing countries with 80% of the world's population still account for only 20% of the cumulative emissions since 1751; the poorest countries in the world, with 800 million people, have contributed less than 1% of these cumulative emissions. Japan reported 2007 emissions were at record levels due to closure of a nuclear power plant.

An MIT report in Geophysical Research Letters indicated that levels of methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide, rose abruptly in Earth's atmosphere in 2007. Methane has more than doubled in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times, but stayed largely stable over the last decade or so before rising in 2007 simultaneously at all the places scientists measured around the globe.

Moving from the air to the oceans, an Australian study showed rising carbon dioxide levels in the world's oceans due to climate change, combined with rising sea temperatures, could accelerate coral bleaching, destroying some reefs before 2050. Scientists reported that the number of polluted "dead zones" areas of oxygen-starved water in the world's oceans is growing at about 5% per annum and coastal fish stocks are more vulnerable to collapse than previously feared. According to the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies in Spain marine organisms are more vulnerable to low oxygen content than currently recognized, with fish and crustaceans being the most vulnerable.

The Center for Australian Weather and Climate Research reported in Nature Geoscience that the Southern Ocean, the world's largest carbon sink, has maintained its ability to soak up excess carbon despite changes to currents and wind speeds. The ocean was becoming warmer and less saline. Currents had not changed in strength, though they had shifted closer to Antarctica. CO2 is absorbed by the ocean's turbulent surface layer and then carried to the depths by circulation patterns. It is also absorbed by phytoplankton and other organisms, which fall to the ocean bottom when they die. Some of the carbon-rich water from the depths rises near Antarctica, releasing CO2, while further away from the continent, it sinks again because it is less dense. Overall the ocean absorbs much more than it releases.

Scientists calculated temperatures had risen about 2 Celsius in the past 40 years in the Arctic and by a few tenths of a degree in Antarctica, where some winter sea ice has even expanded in recent decades. The University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that Arctic sea ice melted to its second-lowest level in the summer of 2008, 34% percent below the average from 1979 to 2000, but 9% above the record low set in 2007, the warmest year on record in the Arctic. The annual report of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that autumn air temperatures in the Arctic had climbed to a record 5 degrees C due to major losses of sea ice caused by a warming trend dating back decades. Wild reindeer and caribou herds appear to be declining in numbers. Surface ice is also melting in Greenland.

However, in line with the adage that every dark cloud has a silver lining, the UN Environment Programme reported that a 3 km thick cloud of pollutants hanging over Asia may be delaying the worst effects of global warming. And the Earth Policy Institute published figures showing that while the number of cars and bicycles manufactured during the 1950's and 1960's was almost the same, nearly three times as many bicycles were manufactured as cars in 2007 and bicycle sales continue to rise even while car sales plummet.

I recently read John Firor's The Changing Atmosphere, which succinctly describes the phenomena of acid rain, stratospheric ozone and climate heating. Long before the end, one feels he is describing a situation that calls for immediate action - I was horrified to find the book was researched and published all of twenty years ago and, apart from getting rid of CFCs, we haven't made a lot of progress since then. However, we're heartened that the new US government plans to comprehend the environment in its proposed economic rescue package. They could well take a leaf out of the book of Portugal, which aims to have 60% of electric power provided by solar, wind, wave and other clean sources by 2020 and which last week signed an agreement with Renault and Nissan to create a national network for zero-emission cars by the end of 2011. Now that's what Detroit should be proposing to Congress is exchange for a bail-out...

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Invest in Timber: Save the Rainforest & Make Money Too..

2008-11-16T11:25:00.001-05:00

Tags: paulownia, managed forests, US Forest Service, underserved peoples, PanAmerican Properties, PanAm Pro, ENOCIS, Enoch Olinga College

What are the characteristics of timberland as an investment?

Trees grow. The value of timber products in each tree tends to increase over time. That is, trees grow into more valuable products over time (pulpwood into saw timber into poles and plywood). Even with constant stumpage prices, tree volume increases and more valuable products are available for harvest, so value naturally increases over time. Timber investment usually involves an additional investment in land. However, investing in a managed forest, the entrepreneur relieves themselves of the cost of the land, maintenance and personnel costs involved with independent investment in timber. PanAmerican Properties, Inc. offers a lucrative investment opportunity whose proceeds rest in a tax free zone. Additionally the program restores deforested areas of the rainforest and creates jobs for the underserved peoples of Panama. Proceeds from the project are used to educate students of excellence by providing them scholarships via the Enoch Olinga College

Timber investments offer the flexibility in cash flows; timber sales can be timed for the market.

Timber investment typically involves a long time period. However, the age structure of purchased forest stands establishes the possible cash flows. Timber can be illiquid, but this can create buying opportunities for investors. Natural risks like diseases, insects and fire can cause losses, but mortality due to all causes is less than 0.5 percent in large holdings.

One of the advantages of the PanAm Pro project is the investor receives a deed which can be negotiated, sold or gifted to third parties.

The paulownia reforestation program offers a much faster and more lucrative turnaround of their assets. Traditionally, it takes twenty or more years before the investor receives a return with paulownia the first return on investment is within 12-18 months. A typical paulownia contract is ten years.

What factors influence the rate of return?

Changes in timber prices. Since World War II pine saw timber prices have exceeded inflation by 2 to 3 percent annually and pine pulpwood has kept up with inflation. USDA Forest Service projections are for continued real price increases.

Tree growth and yield. Tree growth is highly impacted by site quality and forest management intensity. Tree growth can be accurately predicted via computer models.

Changes in tree value. Forest management practices control stocking and influence the size of trees on a tract (and thus the products that can be produced). Overall value can be maximized.

Changes in land value. Increases in land value typically increase overall rates of return.

Costs. Cost effective forest management will result in higher rates of return. Rates of return of 13 to 16% can be generated in Canada and the USA compared with returns of 3 to 6% in UK and Europe with even higher rates of return in Panama the difference rates of return can be attributed to the cost of land and lower labor costs.

What rates of return have historically been earned by timber investments?

University studies show real rates of return in the 10 to 12 percent range can be reasonably expected. A leading timber index based on actual returns found rates of return vary from 11 to 16 percent depending on region. Since 1986 the major timberland property index has returned just over 16 percent annually (40% from income and 60% from capital appreciation).

Timber income represents a cash flow; how predictable is this cash flow?

Timber can produce a managed cash flow. Timber can be stored on the growing tree in bad markets and will grow in volume while stored. Age structure of the forest stands dictates cash flow opportunity and age structure is known at the time of investment.

Timber income will be impacted by:
Stumpage price change, which is a function of timber supply and demand. Government projections show real price increases should continue for the foreseeable future.

Land value changes will obviously affect returns. Government projections are for continued real land value increases.

Tree growth is a major impact and can be modeled by computer; the level of forest management greatly affects tree growth.

How risky is timberland investment?

Stumpage price, land price and tree growth can be considered risks. As discussed under predictable cash flows, diversification minimizes these risks. Control of age structure and storing wood on the growing tree reduce stumpage price risk. Land prices tend to be rather predictable; timber is usually not produced on development-type land. Tree growth is variable, but easily modeled on a computer. Geographic diversification minimizes mortality risk from fire, insects and disease (which average less than 1% on large forest properties).

How do timberland assets correlate with other financial assets?

Published studies demonstrate timberland assets show relatively strong negative correlation with all other major financial assets (treasury bills, government and corporate bonds, and stocks). Timberland assets have a low, but positive, correlation with inflation. Geographic diversification will lower the magnitude and volatility of timberland returns. Additional diversification occurs naturally; timber product prices (pulpwood, saw timber, poles, plywood, etc.) are only lowly correlated.

How volatile are timberland returns?

Like all investments, higher returns usually mean more volatility. Timberland lies above the "capital market line"--meaning it produces high returns relative to volatility. For example, from 1960 to 2001 stocks (S&P 500) returned 10.1 percent with a standard deviation of 16.6 percent, while timberland returned 12.6 percent with a standard deviation of 13.2 percent.

The Capital Asset Pricing Model shows timberland is a negative BETA and a positive ALPHA asset class. This suggests timberland is a "negative risk" investment and should be required to generate even less return than a risk-free investment. That is, timberland appears to be undervalued in term of returns generated relative to risk.

What is the outlook for timberland as an investment?

Institutional investors own over 4 million acres of timberland in the South. Within a decade, this is expected to exceed 12 million acres. Timberland has been shown to provide excellent portfolio diversification. It is negatively correlated with most other financial assets, including real estate, and positively correlated with inflation. Professional timber management investment organizations can easily manage investment risk via geographical diversification and proper forest management. Timberland is above the capital market line; or another way of saying that is it produces significant returns that exceed those expected for its risk level. Timberland is expected to experience dramatic increases in its share of institutional investment over the next decade. Timberland's historic returns justify this interest.

For more information on paulownia, you may visit the web site paulownianow an informative site with a lot of pictures and technical information. There is even a pictorial instruction on how to plant paulownia seeds which can be purchased from the institution by contacting them at info@paulownianow.org

For investment information on managed paulownia plantations you may contact PanAmerican Properties, Inc.

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Panama and How Paulownia Can Help the Poorest Sector of the Nation

2008-10-31T10:56:00.001-04:00

Tags: Panama, paulownia, education, reforestation, environment, Panama Canal, Native Americans To fully understand the benefits of living and retiring in Panama you must first gain a perspective about the country of Panama and how it compares to the United States.

The Republic of Panama situated in the lower part of Central America and the Caribbean. The Republic of Panama is a small coastal isthmus nation with over 75,000 km 2 of area about the size of the State of Maryland with boundaries connecting it to Costa Rica and Colombia, and bisected by the Panama Canal. The climate is tropical, wet and rainy with a mean temperature of 27.7 C and average annual rainfall of 190.8 mm. Panama, a cultural melting pot, inhabited by diverse Native American groups, it was colonized by Spain and formed part of Colombia from 1821 until it declared independence in 1903 becoming the Republic of Panama.

The country now enjoys a politically stable and democratic government. The Balboa, Panama’s exchange of currency is par with the US dollar, and is interchangeable with it, even in coin machines. Merchants accept all major credit cards recognized in the US and there is free trade between the countries. American citizens can travel freely within the country. The parallels continue: The population is mostly Christian but enjoy complete religious freedom. There is 110 AC electricity, they are in the Eastern Time zone, and have the same sources transportation. Panama has a complete network of highways and many people travel by car or bus. Major airlines also service the country, as well as public transportation and rail systems.

Panama’s strategic geographical position and the Panama Canal have made the country a world leader in marine transportation, finance and commerce. The official language is Spanish but English is taught in most schools; and is the official second language. The literacy level of the population is 92.3% one of the highest in Latin America. 65% of the population is dedicated to commercial and service activities.

Panama has a population of approximately 2.8 million people and an annual growth rate of 3.9%. The per capita income is $2,794 a year one of the highest in Central America, with a .5% inflation rate the lowest in Latin America, and a 12.8% rate of unemployment. [1]

On the surface, Panama and the United States seem very close in culture and technology. In fact, Panama is closer to Texas than Texas is to New York City. In spite of similarities, Panama is strikingly different in so many ways. To grasp this, we must admit the painful; they are a third world country, with staggering demands and limited resources. The third world does not live the healthy, well-educated abundant life we almost take for granted. Panama is no different. Some unique problems cannot be legislated away with a humane constitution or eliminated by technical advancement in urban areas.

Although having a relatively high per capita income this number hides the fact that 10% of the poorest sector of the country receive only 0.5% of the total income of the Nation while 10% of the richest receive 42% of the total income of the Republic. Although one of the richest countries in Latin America it has one of the worst distribution of wealth. This absence of social equity affects approximately 50% of the population in a significant manner. The indigenous and other minority populations are affected most dramatically of all. [2]

During one of the darkest times in the history of Panama, the 1980’s when an international embargo was placed against the country and the banks froze all assets a financial anomaly occurred which is note worthy. Although loans of almost all types were going into default, two areas did not appear to be affected by the economic situation: home and educational loans.

In fact, the education industry experienced a slight increase in sales possibly because the increased amount of time unemployed people had on their hands. No other country other than Japan readily comes to mind as having such a high respect for education. When an educator dies people line up for the funerals. No notable private school has ever gone bankrupt and the laws regarding educational institutions are quite favorable making the education business one of the most secure investments in the Republic of Panama. Although schools do not make large earnings on the bottom line, they do demonstrate a steady income and growth potential. Educational facilities are one of the “blue chips” in private industry in Panama.

For the above reason the Enoch Olinga College (ENOCIS) www.enocis.org has implemented a socio economic development project in the areas of extreme poverty of Panama, the PanAmerican Properties, Inc. paulownia elongata reforestation project. www.paulownianow.org The project has two objectives one, to create new sources of income for the poorest sector of Panamanian society and two, produce new sources of revenue for entrepreneurs with a high rate of return with an additional environmental benefit at no additional costs. You may read more about these opportunities or participate in the Paulownia Reforestation project at the following url. http://www.paulownianow.org/index_files/earth.htm

[1] Real Estate and Terminology, CB Richard Ellis LA, 1999. CB Richard Ellis is a US, internationally recognized real estate and development company traded on the US stock Exchange and operating in over 20 countries throughout the World.

[2] The National Census of Panama, the Office of the Comptroller General

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Enter the PanAmerican Properties Essay Contest.

2008-10-08T15:50:00.006-04:00

Tags: essay contest, paulownia, empress tree, environment, PanAmerican Properties, Sons of David, lumber, biodiversity, forest management, conservation, ecosystems

Enter the PanAmerican Properties Essay Contest.

Reduce your carbon footprint with every tree you plant...

WORLDS FASTEST GROWING HARDWOOD SHADE TREE!

THE ROYAL EMPRESS TREE

Also known as Sapphire Dragon Tree, Paulownia, Kiri Tree, Foxglove Tree & Princess Tree

Paulownia trees are your best choice for a fast growing, beautiful tree that is unsurpassed in its ability to help our environment simply by growing.

Save the Earth

Essay Contest

Trees on Steroids!! How planting paulownia trees, one of the fastest growing trees in the world, can help reduce your impact on the environment.

1. Entries received from 1 October 2008 to 30 November 2008 will be eligible to participate. All entries will become the property of the Sons of David Foundation, to be published at their discretion.

2. All entries should be from 750- 1500 words and may be submitted in English, Spanish, French and German. Send entries to essay@paulownianow.org

3. One winner will be selected within 60 days of the close of the contest.

4. The winning essay will be published by the Foundation on the Paulownia web site www.paulownianow.org and blog http://www.paulownianow.blogspot.com

5. The prize!! 100 paulownia seeds plus planting instructions, valued at more than $100 USD, will be sent to the winning contestant.

6. For any question please write to info@paulownianow.org. Your participation in this contest can make a difference in the lives of many living in extreme poverty.

Lumber from Paulownia trees has been greatly revered in Japan and China for centuries. With the decline of our native forests to the lumber industry, Paulownia trees have come into the spotlight worldwide for their ability to produce high quality timber at a much faster rate than any other hardwood tree.

With an extraordinary growth rate and huge air filtering leaves that convert carbon into oxygen at a higher rate than almost any other tree, Royal Empress Trees are rapidly becoming an important part of the solution to reducing our impact on the Earth.

PanAmerican Properties is developing a reforestation initiative designed to create a neutral zone between the indigenous reservations, legitimately established by both international and national law and the non indigenous communities that are invading these reservations and are cutting down the forests to grow grass for grazing cattle.

This newly titled property separates both populations and not only reduces racial tension but also permits the indigenous communities restore their ecology and the environment.

The project offers the nation a politically correct solution to a longstanding serious issue. Strategic reforestation, whereby the Latino and the indigenous populations will be responsible for the growth and maintenance of the trees and be the beneficiaries of the income derived from the selective cutting of the forest.

This sustainable development offers an environmentally friendly solution to generate income for both groups in areas of extreme poverty. This project creates new jobs and sources of income for students graduating from the PanAm Pro training programs for small business, agriculture, agro forestry, and forest ranger.

PanAm Pro pursues non-confrontational, pragmatic, market-based solutions to conservation challenges. This makes it essential for us to work collaboratively with partners—communities, businesses, government agencies, multilateral institutions, individuals and other non-profit organizations.

Most of the world’s biodiversity exists in areas inhabited by people. Effective conservation cannot be achieved unless the people who live and rely on those lands are an integral part of the conservation process. The Foundation depends upon partnerships with indigenous people and local communities to conserve some of the most biologically critical and threatened ecosystems on Earth.

PanAm Pro works with local communities to improve their quality of life from better management of the resource base, including water use, tourism and forest management. This will help maintain and improve local livelihoods, strengthen local economies and improve their capacity for conserving the remaining biodiversity.

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A Brief Overview of Subsistence Farmers in Panama

2008-09-20T12:28:00.003-04:00

Tags: Slash & burn, deforestation, subsistence living, Panama, extreme poverty, indigenous, malnourishment, rice, marginalization Authored by M.C.

Despite a deceptively high national per-capita income, there is much poverty in Panama. The "poster child" of Panamanian poverty would be malnourished, rural and indigenous. There would be no shortage of models for such a poster; 87.7% of the rural indigenous population and 33.5% of the total rural population has been classified as suffering extreme poverty. This means they have a per-capita income of less than $470 dollars per year, insufficient to provide a minimum daily consumption of 2280 calories (Government of Panama, 1998).

At the same time, the natural resources, which sustain the rural population, and with wise use could produce an acceptable standard of living, are being depleted at an alarming rate. For reasons of climate, geographical location and topography, Panama has an apparent comparative advantage in wood and other forest products. Nevertheless, little has been done to develop this advantage.

Often, thousands of dollars of valuable wood is burned to clear land where less than one hundred dollars of rice or corn will be harvested. The annual rate of deforestation has been estimated at 50,000 to 70,000 Ha. per year. Areas of extreme soil degradation due to erosion comprise more than 2,000,000 Ha. More than 1,700,000 Ha. of land that is unsuited to agricultural production is currently in use, and will likely be added to the total of degraded land in the future. Thus, it is probable that the migration to urban areas will continue or increase from its current level (Stewert, 1996).

Who they are and what they are like about 45% of Panama’s population is classified as rural, with 1,007,247 rural non-indigenous and 206,489 rural indigenous people (GOP, 1998). While exact figures for the number of subsistence farmers are not available, a drive through the countryside will suffice to know that the majority of the rural working population is engaged in subsistence agriculture at least part of the year. Within two hour’s travel in any direction from Panama City’s tall buildings, one will encounter subsistence farmers.

In spite of the existing environmental laws, the campesino has had almost unrestricted access to forested land, even in protected areas (Stewart, 1996). There they practice migratory or "slash and burn" agriculture. Usually grains such as rice or tubers such as yucca are planted for about two years, after which the land is abandoned to regrow a forest fallow, or converted into pasture, and the cycle is repeated elsewhere. The campesino combines his unskilled labor with available land, without having to invest money that he doesn’t have, to produce a crop for his family’s consumption.

In areas where there is paid labor available, many campesinos will work for large landowners during part of the year. This depends greatly on transportation and availability of productive land. A man will often abandon planting his own crops to chop woody plants in pastures for $3 per day (Veraguas province) to $6 per day (Coclé) (Personal communication, 1999). He may leave his home for two or three months a year to cut sugar cane for the same daily wage. This indicates that the daily production of the migratory farmer is less than that- certainly an indication of extreme poverty, given the average family size of 5.6 persons (total rural) to 7.2 persons, for indigenous areas (GOP, 1998).

The rural poor spend an average of 71% of its meager income on food, leaving very little for other basic necessities. At the same time, 43% of the rural poor have access to land, indicating that the land, which is available, is underutilized for food or income production.

What are the unmet needs?

According to the government of Panama (1998), poverty is concentrated in rural areas (88% of the national total for extreme poverty), indigenous areas (88% of the total indigenous population is extremely poor) and affects children to a great degree (52% of all children under 5 years and 37% of the total population are poor). The government classifies extreme poverty as per-capita income less than $470 dollars per year, insufficient to reach the minimum daily caloric intake of 2280 calories. The poverty line is set at $726 per-capita per year, sufficient to assure a minimum requirement of calories, plus essential goods and services.

The government characterizes the poor rural population in the following manner (1998):

* Large families- average 5.6 members (national) to 7.2 (indigenous)

* Poorly educated- average 4.5 years of school, 20% illiteracy among the poor, 50% among indigenous women

* Rustic housing- 40% of rural poor (61% of indigenous poor) has dirt floors

* Need for potable water- 27% of rural poor (57% of indigenous) don’t have water systems

* Lack of sanitary facilities- 14% of rural poor and 60% of indigenous poor don’t have latrines or other facilities

* High degree of malnutrition among children- about 1 of 3 poor rural children and 1 of 2 poor rural indigenous children suffer from chronic malnutrition

(2 standard deviations less than average height for age)

* Lack of technical assistance- 5% of all farmers receive technical assistance, this falls to 2.6% among rural poor and 1% for indigenous

* Lack of credit for poor farmers- the non-poor receive 93% of the total value of all agricultural loans

* Deforestation, especially of watersheds, and soil erosion due to lack of soil conservation techniques, are serious problems in rural areas

* Marginalization of women and low productivity of young agricultural workers add to over-all family and community poverty

To sum up-

The large percentage of the Panamanian population, which lives in the countryside, faces a broad range of inter-related problems relating to income, nutrition, housing, water and sanitation and other basic needs.

The available resources- human and "natural" are poorly utilized, and in some cases, being lost. At the same time, the education and technical assistance, which are available, are not nearly sufficient to meet the need for learning the low-input techniques that are required in the situation of lack of credit or other money to invest in small-scale agriculture and community development.