EU

In 2004, Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan professor, won the Nobel Peace Prize for her Greenbelt Campaign. The forestry project has planted more than 30 million trees in its 32 years, stemming deforestation across swaths of Africa and helping 900,000 African women to have decent livelihoods tending to tree nurseries and planting trees.

Trees are undeniably good things. They draw CO2 from the atmosphere and store it physically as carbon in their structure. They improve water and air quality, and protect soil from erosion and, in turn, desertification. Particularly in tropical zones, continuous vegetative cover is the only way to prevent the destruction of the soil, since, as environmental historian Colin Duncan explains,

"In many tropical places, the meager soils also have some unfortunate geological characteristics. High laterite content renders some tropical soils into concrete-like surfaces in the event that the vegetation cover is removed and they are exposed to drier conditions. Such eventualities are practically irreversible."

Still, we should be absolutely clear that greenery is not a panacea for excess atmospheric CO2.

Sometimes tree-planting can ultimately have negative effects on net CO2 emissions. One example occurs when natural or old-growth forests are destroyed and commercial monoculture tree plantations replace them.

Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency is launching a nationwide “smart water” program to monitor one of the world's most important resources. Powered by IBM, the program will use a network of smart sensors, wireless transmitters, and analytic software to continuously monitor and manage water quality along the country’s coastline and in swimmable lakes and rivers.

It’s all part of the European Union’s Bathing Water Directive, which on its face may seem like a simple move to preserve beaches for tourists, but is actually a huge first step in the world’s next big climate-change-related resource battle.

The directive — part of the EU’s Water Framework Directive, which calls for the protection of all water sources — mandates that the water quality in “bathing areas,” that is beaches, lakes, and rivers where people swim, be not only constantly monitored but also managed.

These things were being monitored before, but, much in the same way as it is in other countries that monitor such things, that monitoring was traditionally conducted by teams of scientists who would go to the water source, take samples, analyze it and eventually produce water quality reports.

Using IBM’s technology, the Irish EPA is able to continuously monitor and, more importantly, quickly respond to changes in tides, bacteria counts and weather throughout the country.

“Everything from where rain falls to the chemical makeup of the oceans is in flux, and it continues to change in real time,” explains Sharon Nunes, vice president of Big Green Innovations at IBM. “By providing near-real-time access to water conditions, we’re enabling environmental agencies and citizens alike to make smarter decisions.”

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Part III of a three-part series on cap-and-trade looking at the successes, failures and lessons the U.S. government can learn from three programs already in place.

The European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme creates a common market for trading permits to emit carbon dioxide in 27 countries and puts a price on carbon emissions. But the 5-year-old program isn’t flawless, and critics question whether it’s powerful enough to meaningfully affect global climate change.