BOSTON AREA SOLAR ENERGY ASSOCIATION

Thursday, April 10th, 2014

Grass is Greener! — Carbon Capturing Ecology

Land and climate are inseparable. An essential element of mitigating global warming will be restoration of the world's depleted ecosystems, including estuaries, forests, and grasslands. While we reduce carbon emissions with the ongoing shift to clean, renewable energy, the atmospheric load of 'legacy carbon' is still barrelling down on us. Can the land and ecological processes offer hope against this global warming threat?

Seth Itzkan reports from the Africa Center for Holistic Management in Zimbabwe, part of the Savory Institute, where grazing, in accordance with evolutionary patterns, is re-greening highly depleted landscapes: helping to provide sustainable food and water security in semi-arid areas while invariably sequestering carbon through new soil formation. The climate mitigation potential, if applied on range lands globally, may be significant, and far larger than is conventionally calculated.

Seth Itzkan is President of Planet-TECH Associates, a consultancy focusing on trends and innovations. Seth has twenty five years experience consulting with private and public agencies on strategies for success in changing times. His clients include The Boston Foundation, The U.S. Census Bureau, The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, and the City of Haverhill. Seth is interested in climate change mitigation and is investigating new approaches to the problem, particularly the role of soils and grassland restoration through Holistic Management. Seth is a graduate of the Tufts College of Engineering and the University of Houston Masters of Science Program in Studies of the Future.