A newly installed United Nations Task Force set up in May is taking an integrated approach to the nitrogen problem – something that ECN has advocated for over ten years. The large increase in nitrogen compounds in the environment is having serious global effects on for instance human health, water quality and climate change. A paper in the May issue of Science co-authored by ECN researcher Jan Willem Erisman puts forward possible solutions to at least reduce the growth in nitrogen compounds.
“Nitrogen is essential to mankind, but it has both its merits and flaws. It enables us to produce enough food to feed the world’s population, but at the same time it has damaging effects on the environment because of the inefficient way it is used. The inaugural meeting of the Task Force on Reactive Nitrogen (TRFN), which took place on May 20th, provided an initial opportunity to take a broad look at policy on this complex problem”, says Jan Willem Erisman, unit manager ECN Biomass, Coal & Environmental research and co-author of the Science article on the changing nitrogen cycle.
Structural approach needed
A structural policy is badly needed. Erisman: “Various forms of reactive nitrogen, nitrogen compounds such as nitrogen dioxide – a powerful greenhouse gas – are increasingly finding their way into the environment as a result of industry, energy consumption and intensive arable and livestock farming. They are destroying the natural nitrogen cycle.”
Overproduction is having serious consequences, including harmful effects on human health due to the formation of oxides of nitrogen, fine particulate matter and ozone; damage to nature; less biodiversity; acidification and eutrophication of ecosystems; deterioration in groundwater quality; plagues of algae in the ocean; climate change; and damage to the ozone layer. One molecule of nitrogen can cause a cascade of effects, making the problem more complex than other environmental problems.
The nitrogen cycle in Science
Knowledge of causes, effects and possible solutions – some of which are mentioned in the Science article – is to be brought together in the European Nitrogen Assessment. Erisman notes: “In our paper Transformation of the Nitrogen Cycle: Recent Trends, Questions and Potential Solutions we explain how the damage caused in recent years by more intensive agriculture and increasing use of fossil fuels has grown and what measures we could take to counter future growth. Emissions of reactive nitrogen have gone up by 120 percent since 1970, and nitrogen is being used less and less efficiently! This presents a real threat to nature, water supplies and human health that we cannot yet quantify. Awareness of the problem at the political level already represents a major step towards solving it. We will have to move towards using artificial fertilizers much more efficiently and reduce nitrous oxide emissions from energy production by switching to sustainable energy.”
ECN and the international approach
“This problem has global causes and effects, so we shall have to work towards an international policy”, argues Erisman, who chairs two European network projects on nitrogen, the EU-funded COST 729 programme and the Nitrogen in Europe (NinE) programme funded by the European Science Foundation. In those capacities Erisman has long been a vigorous advocate of putting the nitrogen problem on the political agenda. The Task Force is a major step in the right direction. The two networks will publish the European Nitrogen Assessment in 2009, providing a good basis for the work of the Task Force, which has been set up under the UNECE Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution and is chaired jointly by Great Britain (Dr Sutton, CEH) and the Netherlands (Professors Oennema and Alterra).
ECN and the Dutch Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment organized the first international nitrogen conference in the Netherlands in 1998, as it was clear that nitrogen emissions would only increase, given the growing demand for food and energy. This was the first step towards creating awareness of the problem in a number of conferences, agreements and research programmes. Erisman notes: “ECN, along with other research institutes in the Netherlands and Great Britain, has extensive knowledge of the causes and effects of increasing nitrogen levels in the soil, water and air. We’ve developed tools for quantifying concentrations and emissions. We’ve also done a lot of research into an integrated approach to the nitrogen problem that would reduce losses into the environment without affecting the needs of mankind, resulting in the Nanjing Declaration on Nitrogen Management issued in 2004, at the Third Nitrogen Conference in China.” This knowledge, along with that of many other people and organisations, is being pooled in the NinE and COST 729 research programmes.
Information:
Transformation of the Nitrogen Cycle: Recent Trends, Questions, and Potential Solutions
James N. Galloway, Alan R. Townsend, Jan Willem Erisman, Mateete Bekunda, Zucong Cai, John R. Freney, Luiz A. Martinelli, Sybil P. Seitzinger and Mark A. Sutton, Science 16 May 2008, pp. 889-92.
COST Action 729: Assessing and Managing Nitrogen Fluxes in the Atmosphere-Biosphere System in Europe: www.cost729.org
European Science Foundation Programme: Nitrogen in Europe (NinE): Current Problems and Future Solutions: www.nine-esf.org
Contact:
Jan Willem Erisman
Chairman of ESF-NinE and COST 729
ECN Biomass, Coal and Environmental Research Unit
Tel. 0224 - 564155
erisman@remove-this-part-ecn.nl
