Book of Abstracts

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single family farms in the Northern Negev, a sustainable advanced livestock farming system near Hura, and a
planned farming community in Northern Kenya will be assessed by analyzing environmental indicators, such as
energy consumption, greenhouse gas balance , soil conservation, eutrophication and water consumption. Our
research indicates that incorporation of food and fodder trees is an essential step in improving the environmental
balance of such systems. These trees also contribute to an improved economic balance by increasing fodder
availability and providing high value non-forest products. On the other hand, the need for irrigation water can have
severe environmental impacts due to the high energy cost of water pumping, transport or purification. The
possibility to finance part of the investments required by means of carbon trading/CDM will be discussed, whereby
current rules prevent any funding of small holder property and dryland forestry operations due to inadequate carbon
legislation. Were the carbon sequestration potential of a 100 hectare dryland farm compensated in advance, the full
costs of carbon neutral sustainable farming systems could be covered by a well-designed, carbon-based crediting
system and would solve the world’s most acute food and energy problems in some of its poorest locations.
Carbon cautious: Israel’s policies regarding afforestation and carbon sequestration
Alon Tal; Chair, KKL Committee for Land Development (Overseeing Israeli Forestry); Blaustein Institutes for
Desert Research, Ben Gurion University; Sede Boqer, Israeli; alontal@bgu.ac.il
China was the first developing country, under the Kyoto Protocol, to receive carbon credits for a major tree planting
project in the Pearl River Basin in Guangxi Province, meeting the somewhat convoluted documentation demands set
forth by the U.N. Climate Change Convention. Moldova, Bangladesh, India and Uganda were soon to follow,
receiving carbon credits for afforestation initiatives under the U.N. system that they could then sell to a developed
“Annex 1” nation, according to the Kyoto Protocol. These projects were largely conducted in temperate regions.
What is the potential of tree planting projects for generating profitable carbon credits in dryland regions? During
the past 60 years, afforestation has transformed Israel’s landscape, with forests planted or and planned on 10% of the
country’s land, much of it with less than 300 mm of annual precipitation. After early efforts to establish a
successful commercial timber industry failed, recreation and ecosystem services came to dominate forestry policy
objectives. Given Israel’s status as a ‘developing country’ under the Kyoto Protocol, forests’ economic potential
through carbon sequestration was also explored, but did not prove to be compelling. Several considerations cooled
the initial enthusiasm for seeking international carbon credits through afforestation. These include administrative
obstacles associated with international accreditation (e.g., the small size of available land and the difficulty in
proving “additionality”), low potential economic profitability, and ethical considerations. Rather, a voluntary
offsetting program was adopted, allowing donors to plant trees in Israel that balance individual carbon emissions.
Afforestation in drylands does exhibit meaningful potential to counteract chronic carbon loss due to land
degradation and deforestation. Trees planted in Israel’s semi-arid and arid regions exhibit surprisingly high carbon
sequestration properties that are comparable to forests in temperate Europe. Based on this phenomenon, the
potential for offsetting may become a growing factor in dryland forestry policies, particularly once regulation of
CO2 emissions becomes more widespread and expected of dryland countries. Afforestation in degraded drylands, it
is argued, produces considerable benefits, but the primary gain from “carbon sequestration” at present may not be
economic, but rather the sense of satisfaction in contributing to critical international efforts to reduce the
atmospheric concentration of green house gases.
On-site sheep and goat manure digestion followed by Biogas production & aerobic composting.
Yair Teller 1 , Tareqe Abu- Hamed 1 and Amit Gross 2
1
Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation, The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, Kibbutz
Ketura, Eilot, Israel; yair@ecogas.co.il
2
Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research, Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research,
Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Midreshet Ben Gurion, Israel
In many rural areas, there is a need for decentralized waste management solutions.
For example in the Negev Desert, there are about 90,000 Bedouins who live in unrecognized villages (i.e., no waste
management infrastructure) and grow about 300,000 head of sheep, camels and goats which produce about 200
tons of manure per day.