Fracking - opportunity or challenge?

On 14 August 2013, I woke to a news item on BBC about The Church of England has telling its parishers that fracking causes environmental problems and risks lasting harm to God's glorious creation. As an environmentalist and a Christian, I was very interested in the Article and decided to find it to read. This lead me to the website of the Diocese of Blackborn (http://www.blackburn.anglican.org/more_info.asp?current_id=469) where I found the full article. I wish to share it with my readers so I have reproduced the article below.

Fracking - opportunity or challenge?

 

Hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, is a process for extracting natural gas from shale deep under the water table. It allows energy companies to reach natural gas that was previously inaccessible by breaking up the rocks in which the deposits form. While natural gas is domestically produced and considered to be a cleaner energy source, there are also environmental and human health risks associated with the extraction process

The Diocese of Blackburn has also produced a helpful leaflet on the subject.

 

Fracking - also called hydro-fracking or, officially, horizontal drilling coupled with multi-stage hydraulic fracturing - is a relatively new process of natural gas extraction. Here's a step-by-step guide to the process:

 A well is drilled vertically to the desired depth, then turns ninety degrees and continues horizontally for several thousand feet into the shale believed to contain the trapped natural gas

1. A mix of water, sand, and various chemicals is pumped into the well at high pressure in order to create fissures in the shale through which the gas can escape
2. Natural gas escapes through the fissures and is drawn back up the well to the surface, where it is processed, refined, and shipped to market
3. Wastewater (also called "flowback water" or "produced water") returns to the surface after the fracking process is completed, and it is then contained in steel tanks until it can be stored long-term by deep injection in oil and gas waste wells, or other geological reservoirs

Fracking is fundamentally different than traditional gas extraction methods

• Fracking wells go thousands of feet deeper than traditional natural gas wells
• Fracking utilizes "fracking fluid," a mix of water, sand, and a cocktail of toxic chemicals. While companies performing fracking have resisted disclosure of the exact contents of the fracking fluid by claiming that this information is proprietary, studies of fracking waste indicate that the fluid contains: formaldehyde, acetic acids, citric acids, and boric acids, among hundreds of other chemical contaminants
• Fracking removes millions of gallons of precious freshwater from the water cycle. Fracking requires between two and five million gallons of local freshwater per well - up to 100 times more than traditional extraction methods
• About half of this water returns to the surface, but no one is entirely sure what happens to the other half of the water used in the process. Our best guess is that the water remains underground, though there are indications that at least some of this toxic cocktail makes its way back into the water supply

Fracking causes a range of environmental problems

• In the USA, where fracking is an already established process, there have been reported surface, ground, and drinking water contamination due to fracking
• Pollution from lorry traffic, chemical contamination around storage tanks, and habitat fragmentation and damage from drilling to environmentally sensitive areas have are all related to fracking

Fracking God’s creation: Where should faith communities stand in the arguments between economists and environmentalists over fracking?

Natural gas extraction is increasingly presenting people with a choice between economic gain and a healthy environment. A relatively new technique to extract natural gas from previously unreachable depths is prompting a rush to drill, despite virtually no history as to its environmental impact.

West Lancashire is very much at the centre of the debate about fracking with a pilot well in Elswick having been in operation since 1993, and more recently a systematic series of geological surveys have revealed there is potentially a significant amount of natural gas that could be extracted from beneath the region by using the fracking process, originally developed by the giant American Oil and Gas extraction corporation Halliburton, and now being adopted in Lancashire by a company called Cuadrilla.

People in favour of fracking claim it is a means of addressing economic necessity that can fill the shortfall in energy supplies that have hitherto been extracted from the North Sea oil and gas reserves. On a more localized basis, gas companies claim that drilling brings economic benefits, including increased employment. This premise is alluring to many landowners, including local farmers who may be struggling to make their land profitable. It has lured landowners to sign or contemplate signing leases to drill on their land. This is one way they can retain their land and make money, and money in today’s world seems to count for more than environmental stability

Those opposed to fracking are concerned nonetheless with health and the environment. They question the safety of the process, where will gas companies get the millions of gallons of water needed, where will it be stored once it’s brought back to the surface mixed with fluids from deep underground and those toxic chemicals. A point of contention is that gas companies are not required to disclose the chemicals employed in fracking, no doubt as a way to keep their fluid recipes secret from competitors.

Fracking produces gas that, when burnt, is as, if not more, toxic than coal, and for it to be considered as an environmentallly-friendly source of energy, can only be burnt in power stations that have installed expensive and effective carbon capture and storage (CCS) processes. This CCS technology is currently far from well-developed on an industrial and commercially viable scale.

 Those with reservations about fracking also want to know how it will affect the soil and, above all, sources of drinking water, including ground water. Human and environmental health are greater priorities for opponents than potential economic gain. An increasing body of reported evidence from the United States of America raises concerns about the structural stability of wells, explosions, combustible water, illness among humans, farm animals and plant life, and the necessity to purchase water for drinking, bathing and other common uses. Fracking opponents point out that we can live without gas, but not without water.

 

The rush to benefit from the gas-drilling bonanza is an obvious temptation for many and this, of course, raises the question of how consideration for God the Creator enters into the decision-making process. Is there a way for Christians to be guided by the scriptures in applying biblical and theological considerations to gas drilling?

Our solutions must be rooted in scripture, employ our ability to reason, stem from listening to people who have experienced fracking positively and negatively, and to discern under God’s guidance what is good and right. As local church members become more aware of the issues surrounding fracking, they need to engage in biblical and theological discussion about their responsibility as stewards of the earth.

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The Longer, The Costlier

One report of the United Nations that I regularly seek to read is the” Human Development Report” (HDR). Since 1990, the UN has produced these reports which seem to impact policies around the world. In 1990, the first Human Development Report opened with the simply stated premise: “People are the real wealth of a nation.” This statement couldn’t have been more appropriate. The empirical data these reports use and produce makes it so clear and with little ambiguity how countries are developing and how the people in these countries feel and see these developments. 

In this post and for the purpose of this blog, I am focusing on the 2011 Human Development Report under the theme “Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All”. The 2011 HDR clearly argued for the simultaneous addressing of the twin-challenge of sustainability. The report further identified policies on the national and global level that could spur mutually reinforcing progress towards these interlinked goals.

The various environmental challenge including anticipated adverse effects of climate change on agricultural production, access to clean water and improved sanitation, and pollution comes in to compound the issues of the already poor in the society. Under a scenario encompassing the environmental challenges mentioned, the report projected that the average global Human Development Index (HDI) value would be 8% lower by 2050 than under the “base case” scenario, which assumes a continuation but not a worsening of current environmental trends. HDI is a composite statistic of life expectancy, education, and income indices used to rank countries into four tiers of human development: very high, high, medium and low human development. 

For places like South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, it was projected that average regional HDI would be 12% lower under challenging environmental scenario than it is now by the year 2050. Under a more severe “environmental disaster” scenario, the global HDI value in 2050 would fall 15% below the current baseline — 22% below in South Asia and 24% below in Sub-Saharan Africa, effectively halting or even reversing decades of human development progress in both regions.

As much as I do not like the doomsday prophecies associated with impacts of climate change, sometimes I cannot help but talk about it. The possible impact of environmental degradation, under which climate change falls, is so serious and yet nothing much seems to be done about it. Under any kind of scenario that one wishes to look at with regards to the impact of environmental degradation, the already poor and marginalised people can only get poorer. Billions of people will be worse off in, let’s say 20150, living in extreme income poverty than they are now. The 2011 HDR also projects that environmental calamities would keep some 800 million poor people from rising out of extreme income poverty, under an environmental challenge scenario.

It is a fact that environmental threats are among the major impediments to lifting human development, and their consequences for poverty are likely to be high. But such an obvious challenge is not being addressed head-on in the manner it should be. Many meetings and treaties have come and gone and yet not much has changed for the better. 

The longer action is delayed, the higher the cost will be. We need not wait to say sorry. As each day passes our chances of solving a problem also passes.

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Ghana’s forestry programmes for climate change

Kwame Agyei brings the concluding part of his article, "FORESTS AND CLIMATE CHANGE". He  focuses on Ghana’s forestry programmes for climate change in this piece titled: "Ghana’s forestry programmes for climate change". Kwame Agyei holds a master's degree in Climate Change from the Australian National University (2012). He has worked with the Forestry Commission (FC) of Ghana since February, 2007.  He also holds a Graduate Diploma in Environmental Management from the Australian National University (2011) and BSc in Natural Resources Management from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (2005).

GHANA'S FORESTRY PROGRAMMES FOR CLIMATE CHANGE

The main forestry programme with direct relevance for climate change mitigation/ adaptation in Ghana is the REDD+ scheme (USAID 2011). Formal REDD+ activities in Ghana commenced from 2008 when the REDD+ Project Idea Note of Ghana was approved by the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF). Afterwards, Ghana began a project to ensure that preparatory activities to pave the way for a full National REDD+ scheme are completed by 2014 (Forestry Commission 2010). The preparatory activities have focussed on addressing issues such as the manner by which benefits from the REDD+ scheme will be shared equitably amongst stakeholders as well as the mechanisms by which the carbon stocks conserved and enhanced through the REDD+ scheme will be monitored, measured, verified and reported to meet acceptable global standards. Ghana is well on course to achieve these objectives and the nation is presently piloting REDD+ activities as a final step of the preparatory processes.

The focal point of the REDD+ scheme in Ghana is the Climate Change Unit of the Forestry Commission. The Climate Change unit serves as the secretariat of the National REDD+ Technical Working Group which is within the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources.

The implementation of the REDD+ scheme in Ghana is proceeding with complementation from other sustainable forest management initiatives which are outlined below. First, Ghana has entered into a Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with the European Union since November, 2009. The essence of the VPA is to ensure that only legally produced timber from Ghana is exported to the EU. The advantage of the VPA stems from the fact that almost half of Ghana’s locally produced timber is exported to the EU and consequently such an agreement will be helpful in addressing illegal logging (USAID 2011).

The Government of Ghana has also been implementing an ambitious plantation programme under the National Forest Plantation Development Programme since 2001. The programme has a target of establishing 20,000 hectares of tree plantations each year. The programme is being implemented with a variety of stakeholders including the local communities, through the Modified Taungya Programme which incorporates plantation establishment with agriculture, as well as engagement of private developers under the Private Plantation Development Programme.

Ghana has also been systematically implementing the Non-Legally Binding Instrument (NLBI) on all types of forests since 2008. The NLBI was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2007 and is focussed on ensuring that forest management interventions are implemented in a transparent manner where all relevant stakeholders are actively engaged and provided with adequate information on all initiatives.
The REDD+ scheme is therefore been implemented within very positive forestry initiatives and interventions in Ghana. It is anticipated that if the support for the scheme is sustained by the government through its relevant agencies, the REDD+ scheme will not only represent an opportunity for Ghana to reap the monetary and other co-benefits associated with sustainable forest management but it will also ensure that the country actively partakes in global efforts on climate change.

CONCLUSION
This article sought to shed light on human induced climate change and the essential roles of forests in climate change. Additionally, the article outlined global and national efforts aimed at incorporating forestry in climate change. The important role of forests in climate change and other essential natural processes which make life as we know it possible should inspire all of us to plant trees, nurture trees, fight the menace of deforestation and support all other forms of sustainable forest management strategies. It is often accurately pointed out that when the last tree dies, the last person dies.

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