Aiming for just enough Nitrogen (and not too much!)

Professor Mark Sutton from CEH is currently in Kampala, Uganda at the 6th International Nitrogen Conference, where he has joined other scientists, agriculturalists, environmentalists, industrialists, economists and policy-makers to discuss issues linked to nitrogen management, including food security, human health, agriculture and the water cycle. On Friday (22 November), it is planned that the Conference will finalize and announce the Kampala Declaration on global nitrogen management.

Prof Sutton chairs the International Nitrogen Initiative (INI) which has organised the conference with the African Nitrogen Centre, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and Makerere University College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Also attending the conference are Prof Sutton's CEH colleagues Prof Nancy Dise and Dr Ute Skiba, each of whom are speaking at the event.

The conference, which runs from 18-22 November 2013, has the tagline "Let us aim for Just Enough N: Perspectives on how to get there for 'too much' and 'too little' regions".

Prof Sutton is chairing a session on Global and Regional Assessment and making a keynote speech "Global Nitrogen Assessment: From Our Nutrient World to the International Nitrogen Management System (INMS)". Our Nutrient World is the UNEP publication edited by Prof Sutton which was published by CEH earlier this year. It is planned that Prof Sutton will also moderate the finalization of the Kampala Declaration on Friday.

The Kampala meeting is believed to be the world's first 'Nitrogen Neutral' conference, where delegates are offered the opportunity to contribute offsetting their nitrogen footprint associated with the conference.  At the same time, the delegates have adopted a demitarian approach - reducing their consumption of meat by half compared with the usual menu at the conference venue, the Speke Resort Hotel - as a means of reducing their own nitrogen footprint.

A key issue being discussed at the meeting is how to get more Nitrogen into Africa, with the main debate being that of fertiliser usage versus biological nitrogen fixation, and how to get the best from both aspects.

This is the sixth international conference to take place after previous events in the Netherlands, USA, China, Brazil and India. The common objective of these conferences is the design of more productive, economic and sustainable food and energy production systems to meet the challenges of the growing global population whilst minimising the cascade of environmental effects posed by nitrogen. Air pollution, water pollution, biodiversity and climate change are all impacted through "too much" nitrogen in the environment, but it is an essential part of the story to ensuring global good security.

The International Nitrogen Initiative is a global effort to optimize nitrogen's beneficial role in sustainable food production and to minimize nitrogen's negative effects on human health and the environment.

Additional information

Prof Nancy Dise is speaking on "Impacts of nitrogen deposition on the ecology and biogeochemistry of European peat bogs: The PEATBOG Project" in a session on N and ecosystem health.

Dr Ute Skiba is speaking on "Comparison of N, C and GHG budgets from European forests, wetlands and agricultural land" in a session on N emissions and climate change.

Related links

Staff page of Prof Mark Sutton

Updated 22 November 2013

Prof Mark Sutton was on the Steering Committee and Editorial Team, and was Part 2 Coordinator, of the new UNEP Synthesis Report, Drawing Down N₂O to Protect Climate and the Ozone Layer, which was published on Thursday 21 November 2013, coinciding with the COP19 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Warsaw. Additionally, Dr Ute Skiba from CEH was a lead author on the new report, which aims to inform policymakers and stakeholders about the impacts of nitrous oxide (N₂O) emissions on the climate and ozone layer. More details can be found from the UNEP press release.

Nitrogen narratives in Nairobi – confessions of a reluctant blogger

Professor Mark Sutton from CEH has been in Nairobi, Kenya, this week at the United Nations Environment Programme Governing Council. Here he reports back on experiencing life at the sharp end of the science-policy debate.

Here you find a reluctant blogger. I am currently writing this late at night, after a day full of meeting people of so many nations, many disciplines and many roles.

Half the day has been spent talking - trying to better understand what makes people tick, understanding why they hold their positions. Half the day has been spent talking to press colleagues, and lining up interviews with various newspapers, radio and TV channels - often by mobile phone. Not all of these interviews will come off, but a fraction will, and through them we can reach a much wider audience than our scientific papers and reports. The other half of the day has been spent reading and writing emails, trying to keep up with everything that is going past. (All of this would not have been possible without the great support from UNEP colleagues in DEPI, DCPI and DEWA divisions).

As you can see my maths does not add up –  but you hopefully get the right impression.

In fact impressions are everything here. As a scientist one can spend a long time designing experiments, collecting and interpreting data - refining the message for a scientific audience. But here I am, at the Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi. 1000 delegates have joined together to address environmental issues, to review the UNEP programme of work, and even make a few decisions about how to manage the planet's environment better.

So, what about making impressions. My point is that the delegates present here are nothing like a scientific audience. Peer review, statistics, lovely data series, and even new conceptual paradigms, don’t count for much around here. As several people here have commented, by far the strongest thing is "the narrative". Yes, it's great to have the scientific data and the evidence in the background [and really it is VERY important!]. But the thing that grabs their attention is a good story, where we simplify our science to its barest essence, turning complexity into something that everyone can understand.

This seems to be my job for the week. I am here to launch a report, "Our Nutrient World", commissioned by UNEP. It's about "the challenge to produce more food and energy with less pollution". We need nutrients, like nitrogen and phosphorus, to make crops grow and feed the world. The problem is that most of these nutrients leak out to the environment, weaving a web of air, water and soil pollution, contributing to climate change and threatening biodiversity. So let's manage nutrients better, let's think about a suitable goal, and let's get people talking.

In fact we have 10 key actions in our pack of options, from farming management techniques and sewage treatment to the ambition to recapture NO_x (nitrogen oxides) into useful products.

But not many people want to talk about smart manure spreading. So I focus on what people do want to talk about. And that is food. In a way it's their call.

Throughout the week I’ve been highlighting the fact that 80% of the harvested nitrogen in the world ends up feeding livestock rather than people, that Europeans eat 70% more protein than needed for a healthy diet, and that, for many of us on the planet, we live in a world of "food luxury" rather than struggling to maintain a minimum "food security".

It’s a great discussion for dinner and just about anywhere you like. And before you know it, the horse-meat scandal has become linked up with nutrient management. People are thinking about their food choices. We have the demitarian option on the table, and the journalists and radio producers want to hear about it.

So it seems somewhat ironic when a lunchtime radio presenter says that: surely I am speaking to the wrong audience. Surely the team from "Our Nutrient World" should instead have been making recommendations to farmers...

And, of course we are.  But if we had only done that, then no one would have been listening. The food debate has given nitrogen an opening - and a chance to explain what we can do about this pan-dimensional problem.

It’s a challenge that crosses all global change issues. We need nitrogen, but we need to manage it better. And really: every citizen needs to know nitrogen. Because until they do, the politicians will not be empowered to make decisions, and start taking the local, national and intergovernmental conversation to the next stage.

Additional information

Prof. Mark Sutton is the lead author on Our Nutrient World - The challenge to produce more food and energy with less pollution. The report is a global overview of nutrient management and was published on 18 February 2013.

Mark was also lead researcher on the European Nitrogen Assessment published in April 2011.

UNEP 1st Universal Session of the Governing Council / Global Ministerial Forum, Nairobi, 18-22 Feb 2013