Better wildfire management would help reduce black carbon pollution say Arctic experts

Share:

Listens: 0

RCI | English : Columns

Miscellaneous


Better wildfire management and improved agricultural practices have been added to a list of black carbon and methane mitigation recommendations by a group of international experts. The Arctic Council Expert Group on Black Carbon and Methane, which includes experts from all over the world including Canada, added the two new recommendations, along with previous recommendations in four other areas: diesel-powered sources, the oil and gas sector, residential combustion and solid waste disposal, in its 2019 report Summary of Progress and Recommendations. "The expert group certainly concluded that's there's potential for making more ambitious targets ," said Mikael Hilden, the former chair of the Arctic Council Expert Group on Black Carbon and Methane under Finland's 2017-2019 chairmanship. "Black carbon can, of course, not be completely excluded," Hilden said in telephone interview from Helsinki.  "As long as humans burn something, there will be some emissions of black carbon. But it can be contained, it can be reduced significantly. That's the important message." Gas flares, a producer of black carbon, go off at a an unnamed liquefied natural gas plant on Sakhalin island in Russia's Far East. (Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images) Recommendations around agricultural policies includes finding ways to reduce agricultural burning as well as recommendations to "...promote food consumption patterns that utilize Arctic food chains sustainability and efficiently, support the preservation of carbon sinks, and minimize life-cycle emissions of methane," says the report. It also recommends that work be done to reduce emissions of enteric methane under Arctic conditions, in co-operation with relevant organizations. Enteric methane is caused when organic matter breaks down. Wildfire management Wildfires are becoming a increasing concern in the North because of how they contribute to black carbon emissions. In summer 2018, fires raged in circumpolar countries like Sweden, Finland, Russia and Norway, including in their respective Arctic regions. The report's recommendations stress the importance of collaboration between Arctic countries on wildfire management, suppression and monitoring, and call for the need to  "... maintain international mutual aid and resource exchange arrangements" and regionally specific public education programs on wildfire prevention and safety. A wildfire burning approximately 20km southwest of Fort St. James, in the Canadian province of British Columbia on Wednesday August 15, 2018. Northern nations should do more to share best practices on wildfire management and prevention, says a new report from an Arctic Council expert group. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press) "Locally, there's lots of things to be learned across the arctic countries," Hilden said. The situation is of course vastly different in say, Canada, compared with Finland, where we have a dense network of forest roads, and therefore, extinguishing forest fires is easier and more manageable, but that doesn't mean of course that it would be a complete one off and that there couldn't' be things that the Arctic countries couldn't learn from each other. "There should be more exchange on this including the prepardness, the information contained, in order to reduce unnecessary fires and doing the managment in such a way that the wildfires can be managed to the extent that they are manageable." Dangerous to health and environment Black carbon and methane emissions are a serious concern for the world’s circumpolar countries because of this form of pollution’s role in warming the atmosphere. When black carbon is deposited on ice and snow, it absorbs heat, instead of reflecting heat from these surfaces, contributing to global warming. After carbon dioxide, it’s the second biggest contributor to warming. Black carbon is made up of fine matter produced by incomplete combustion of carbon-based fuels.