Environmental impacts biodiversity

CBA relies heavily on the costs of environmental impacts. Some impacts may be easily expressed in monetary values, like crop loss or even increased morbidity among people. Others, like impact on biodiversity and the depletion of natural resources, are more difficult to describe in terms of monetary values. Large time scales and global impacts also complicate the methodology and confuse the understanding of the results. Some of the environmental consequences of today s activities appear only after several hundred or thousand yeats. Even low interest rates tend to diminish these types of impact, even if they are very large. 

Furthermore, the extraction of non-conventional oil has other detrimental environmental impacts, such as water pollution and loss of biodiversity. Depending on the depth of the deposits, oil sands are either strip mined in open pits or heated so that the bitumen from which the non-conventional oil is extracted can flow to the surface (in-situ extraction). Both forms of oil-sands extraction require considerable amounts of energy (i.e., natural gas) and water, and lead to significant detrimental environmental impacts (Woynillowicz et al., 2005 see also Chapter 3). 

Although the experts assessments vary enormously by country, the mean values show that the most important subjects with respect to the environmental impacts of organic farming are landscape, soil, ground and surface water and biodiversity. Climate as well as air and energy uses are, however, assessed to be of only minor importance. Only two experts identified animal health and welfare to be of special importance for organic farming in this context. 

Soil and Environmental Analysis Physical Methods, Second Edition, Revised and Expanded, edited by Keith A. Smith and Chris E. Mullins The Rhizosphere Biochemistry and Organic Substances at the Soil-Plant Interface, Roberto Pinton, Zeno Varanini, and Paolo Nannipieri Woody Plants and Woody Plant Management Ecology, Safety, and Environmental Impact, Rodney W. Bovey Metals in the Environment Analysis by Biodiversity, M. N. V. Prasad Plant Pathogen Detection and Disease Diagnosis Second Edition, Revised and Expanded, P. Narayanasamy... 

From these data on pesticide usage, the environmental effects associated with adoption of GM crops will be assessed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Qualitatively, the impact will be predicted based on, for example, properties of pesticides, quantities of applied pesticides, times of application, pest characteristics, and geographic conditions. Subsequently, the quantitative assessment will employ methods such as environmental indicators that allow for a comparison of the environmental impacts of different pesticide regimes. The enviroiunental impact may also cover other important parameters associated with altered agronomic practices under GM crop cultivation, such as tillage practices and farmland biodiversity. 

These published studies have recognised wool and meat as the co-products for sheep production systems of interest. However, sheep systems in some regions also provide milk with high economic value for human food. It is also recognised that sheep can provide other functions that can potentially be accounted for, thereby reducing the environmental impacts allocated to wool. For example, RipoU-Bosch et al. (2013) studied sheep systems in Spain and noted that the benefits of sheep to ecosystem services (e.g. conservation of biodiversity and landscapes) were important in extensive mid-high altitude natural/seminatural areas and allocated up to one-half of total GHG emissions to these ecosystem services based on an economic approach. 

Ecological impact of operations. This includes the loss of biodiversity, loss of species, loss of wetlands and restoration of land and waters to environmentally beneficial use. This requires setting a base inventory and then periodically updating it. 

An even more streamlined approach scores each stage of the life cycle for impact on a number of environmental indicators. Typical indicators include resource depletion, global warming potential, smog production, acidification, eutrophication, toxic waste production and biodiversity impact. Impact is estimated using a simple numerical scale. The completed matrix is used to focus attention on areas for improvement. 

MODELKEY (http // www.modelkey.org/) was an EU-funded project (2005-2010) within the sixth framework programme (FP6-2005-global-4, Topic II 3.1) that aimed to deliver models for assessing and forecasting the impact of environmental key pollutants on freshwater, and marine ecosystems and biodiversity. The main objectives of MODELKEY were ... 

To provide a better understanding of toxic impacts on aquatic ecosystems, cause-effect relationships between changes in biodiversity and the impact of environmental pollution as causative factor as well as the underlying processes. This included the assessment of sub-lethal effects in vitro and in vivo as early warning strategies and of their strength to predict potential hazards to the ecosystem. 

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