AFP UK

India will be a fighter for “climate justice” at the upcoming COP26 summit, seeking to make rich nations pay for measures to ease rising temperatures, the country’s environment minister said Wednesday.

And the world’s third biggest source of greenhouse gases is not yet guaranteeing that it will offer new mitigation efforts at the crucial conference which starts Sunday in Glasgow.

India, along with the world’s leading gas emitter China, is among dozens of countries still to submit fresh plans for cutting greenhouse gas emissions so they can become net zero — eliminating as much carbon as they produce.

Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav said India would set out what extra efforts it is ready to make “at the appropriate place and the appropriate time.”

India, whose Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be at the summit, said controlling carbon should be the COP26 priority over setting target dates to become net zero.

“It is how much carbon you are going to put in the atmosphere before reaching net zero that is more important,” said R.P. Gupta, the environment ministry’s top permanent official.

According to the ministry’s figures, each Indian produces about 1.9 tonnes of carbon per year, against 7.1 tonnes for the average European Union citizen, 8.4 tonnes for a Chinese and 18 tonnes for the average American. 

Yadav said assessing and financing the world’s campaign to limit temperature rises will be one of the most crucial tasks at Glasgow.

“India will fill the role of the voice of developing nations,” Yadav told a small group of journalists on the eve of his departure for the talks.

“India will be a path to a solution with climate justice.”

The country of 1.3 billion people, and one of the world’s fastest growing economies, has long insisted that countries who profited from past industrialisation — Europe and North America — should pay the lion’s share of the climate crisis bill.

Yadav noted the concern of poorer nations that richer ones have failed to live up to promises made at earlier climate summits to provide hundreds of billions of dollars in financial aid and technology.

India has one of the world’s leading solar power programmes, and US climate envoy John Kerry said that the country was “red hot” for solar investment.

But it currently counts on coal for about 70 percent of generated electricity and will have to spend more than $40 billion to dismantle just 14 percent of its oldest and dirtiest coal power stations, according to the Climate Policy Initiative think tank.

Gupta said that without finance for poorer nations “it becomes extremely difficult to have green development at our own cost.”

US drugmaker Merck & Co. on Wednesday announced a deal that could see generic versions of its Covid-19 medication widely distributed in poorer countries, in a first during the pandemic.

The global Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) said it had signed a voluntary licensing agreement with Merck to facilitate affordable worldwide access for its investigational oral antiviral medicine molnupiravir.

Subject to regulatory approval, the deal will help create broad access to molnupiravir in 105 low- and middle-income countries.

The US and European Union medicines regulators are reviewing the drug.

Antivirals like molnupiravir work by decreasing the ability of a virus to replicate, thereby slowing down the disease.

Given to patients within days of a positive test, the treatment halves the risk of hospitalisation, according to a clinical trial conducted by Merck, also called MSD outside the United States.

Merck’s deal with MPP is “a positive step towards creating broader access to treatment as quickly as possible,” the World Health Organization said in a statement.

But it urged the drugmaker to “provide data of clinical trials to WHO as soon as possible so the agency can evaluate the medicine for global use”.

It also pressed Merck to “include other key countries in the scope of the agreement in the near future”.

The Geneva-based MPP is a United Nations-backed international organisation that works to facilitate the development of medicines for low- and middle-income nations.

Under the deal, Merck grants a licence to the MPP, under which the organisation can then sub-licence to makers of generic drugs. 

The deal means the drug’s developers will not receive sales royalties while Covid-19 remains classified as a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) by the WHO.

A PHEIC is the highest alarm the WHO can sound and its emergency committee last week reconfirmed the pandemic’s top-alert status.

– Price not yet set –

“The interim results for molnupiravir are compelling and we see this oral treatment candidate as a potentially important tool to help address the current health crisis,” said MPP executive director Charles Gore.

Merck is jointly developing molnupiravir with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics.

The Miami-based company’s chief executive Wendy Holman said the deal meant “quality-assured generic versions of molnupiravir can be developed and distributed quickly following regulatory authorisation”.

The MPP was founded by Unitaid, which works on innovations to prevent, diagnose and treat major diseases in poorer countries.

Molnupiravir prices have not yet been determined, but its simplicity, plus competition among generic manufacturers should mean low prices in the 105 poorer countries, said Unitaid spokesman Herve Verhoosel.

He said in countries with low vaccination rates, millions would need the drug to prevent progression to serious illness.

“We also need to see this licence followed by others as soon as possible for other key promising products expected to come out of the pipeline soon, for which we also need to ensure broad supply and affordability,” Verhoosel added.

– IP waiver call –

While the search for vaccines has resulted in multiple products being approved for emergency use in the pandemic, the hunt for treatments for those who have already caught the disease has not been as fruitful.

The medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) welcomed the announcement but said it did not go far enough.

“The licence excludes key upper-middle-income countries like Brazil and China from its territory, where there is strong, established capacity to produce and supply antiviral medicines,” MSF senior policy advisor Yuanqiong Hu said.

“Furthermore, the licence contains an unacceptable clause undermining the rights to challenge patents on molnupiravir.”

Hu said the agreement underlined the urgent need for a temporary waiver of intellectual property rights for all Covid-19 medicines, vaccines and tests.

NASA is teaming up with SpaceX once more to send four astronauts to the International Space Station on Sunday, including three first-timers.

The crew of mission “Crew-3” will spend six months on the orbital outpost, conducting research in areas including material sciences, health, and botany, to help inform future deep space exploration and benefit life on Earth.

Americans Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, and Kayla Barron as well as German Matthias Maurer of the European Space Agency (ESA) will launch aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft named “Endurance,” fixed atop a Falcon 9 rocket at 2:21 am (0621 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

“Last night we got to go see Endurance in the hangar as they got ready to roll it out to the pad, and actually put our hands on the Dragon, which is a pretty special experience,” Chari, a US Air Force colonel who is commanding the mission, said at a press conference on Wednesday.

Of the four, only Marshburn has gone to space before. The medical doctor flew aboard a Space Shuttle in 2009 and a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in a mission from 2012-13.

Barron, who along with Chari was selected for the NASA astronaut corps in 2017, the most recent recruitment, previously served as a submarine warfare officer for the Navy, and told reporters she saw many parallels between that experience and going to space.

The pair are also in the mix for NASA’s Artemis missions to return humans to the Moon later this decade.

Maurer, a materials science engineer, will become the 12th German to go to space and will join fellow ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet of France on the ISS, an overlap that will likely last a few days before the Frenchman returns to Earth with the rest of his Crew-2 colleagues.

Following a 22-hour voyage, Endurance will autonomously dock with the space station at 12:10 am Monday (0410 GMT).

– Growing plants without soil –

Scientific highlights of the mission include an experiment to grow plants in space without soil or other growth media, and another to build optical fibers in microgravity, which prior research has suggested will be superior in quality to those made on Earth.

Maurer will help operationalize the European Robotic Arm which is currently being installed on the Russian side of the ISS, and test out CIMON — an artificial intelligence assistant developed by the German space agency DLR, Airbus and IBM.

“It’s an experiment which is really paving the way towards exploration,” he said.

For example, it may one day act as a geology expert that astronauts on a future mission to Mars could consult for quick answers because the lag time to communicate with Earth would be 40 minutes, he said.

The Crew-3 astronauts will also conduct spacewalks to complete the upgrade of the station’s solar panels, and will be present for two tourism missions including Japanese tourists aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft at the end of 2021, and the Space-X Axiom crew, set for launch in February 2022.

Crew-3 is part of NASA’s multibillion dollar partnership with SpaceX that it signed after ending the Space Shuttle program in 2011, in order to restore American capacity to carry out human spaceflight.

Boeing is also part of the same commercial program but its Starliner capsule has been beset by delays and won’t fly its first crew until the end of 2022 at the earliest.

That cow may look peaceful and harmless, munching on some grass in a verdant pasture. 

But don’t be fooled — it is emitting methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas contributing to runaway global climate change.

Agriculture is responsible for 12 percent of global man-made greenhouse gas emissions, much of it due to methane, the second most warming gas after carbon dioxide.

Methane is around 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas over a 100-year period, but it stays in the atmosphere for only 12 years compared to centuries.

So drastically reducing methane emissions could have a major impact in mitigating the damage expected from global warming in the coming decades.

Agriculture and livestock farming generate around 40 percent of the methane related to human activities, the rest produced by the fossil fuel industry.

Much of that methane is produced by the digestive process in cows, which then burp the emissions out into the world.

Around 95 percent of the methane produced by cows come from their mouths or nostrils.

So how can we reduce the danger being belched out by cows across the world every day?

– Cows with masks –

US agricultural giant Cargill, partnering with British start-up ZELP (Zero Emissions Livestock Project), has developed a form of mask that covers cows’ nostrils.

The device filters the methane, transforming it into carbon dioxide, which per molecule has a much less potent effect on global warming.

Ghislain Boucher, head of the ruminant team at Cargill’s animal nutrition subsidiary Provimi, said the first results were “interesting”.

“Methane emissions have been reduced by half,” he told AFP.

However the device still needs to be tested in real-world conditions before it can be marketed late next year — or even in 2023.

In the short term, Cargill is starting to market in northern Europe a calcium nitrate food additive, saying that 200 grammes daily would reduce cow methane emissions by 10 percent.

The additional cost is estimated to be “between 10 and 15 cents per cow per day,” Boucher said at a breeding gathering in central France.

– Seaweed to the rescue? – 

Adding red seaweed to cow feed has far more potential, according to a US study published earlier this year, which indicated it could reduce methane emissions by more than 80 percent.

If the results can be repeated, red seaweed would need to grown in vast quantities, preferably near farming areas, the researchers at University of California Davis said.

However a question looms over the issue: how will farmers react to paying more for such measures which do not add to their bottom line, unless they are reimbursed via some kind of carbon credit?

It is also uncertain how consumers will respond. For example, will Americans who prefer corn-fed beef be as partial to the seaweed-fed variety?

And perhaps the easiest way to reduce cow methane emissions is for the world to eat less beef and diary.

A report by the United Nations Environment Programme in May pointed out that technological measures have a “limited potential to address” methane emissions from the agriculture sector.

“Three behavioural changes, reducing food waste and loss, improving livestock management, and the adoption of healthy diets (vegetarian or with a lower meat and dairy content) could reduce methane emissions by 65-80 million tonnes a year over the next few decades,” it said.

Small farmers around the world who grow thirsty crops like corn will face a huge adaptation challenge as the effects of climate change worsen in the coming years, experts warned Wednesday.

In a report issued ahead of the UN climate conference opening in Glasgow on Sunday, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) sounded the alarm after commissioning a study on agriculture in southern and eastern Africa.

Harvests of staple crops in eight countries could plummet by up to 80 percent by 2050 as warming accelerates, the report projected.

“This could have a catastrophic impact on poverty and food availability unless there is an urgent injection of funding to help vulnerable farmers adapt how and what they farm,” it said.

The study was carried by the University of Cape Town, which analysed climate impact on agriculture in Angola, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. 

It projected a temperature rise of around two degrees Celsius (3.8 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2069, and up to 2.6C in some places.

“The eight countries analysed are very different, landlocked, coastal, mountainous or semi-arid, but the conclusions are repeated and grim,” said IFAD, a specialised UN agency.

“Rainfall will be scarcer but also more erratic, with flash floods threatening crops and soil stability,” it said.

Corn, also called maize, requires a lot of water to grow, which will add to pressure on farmers to switch to strains that mature earlier, or to switch to more resilient crops such as cassava, peanuts, beans, sorghum and millet.

But moving to different crops is easier said than done, as there can be strong market preferences, IFAD said.

Farmers also face many financial and technical hurdles as they contemplate a switch, from advice on seeds and the acquisition of new tools to the processing and storage of crops to prevent spoilage.

Rich countries in 2015 vowed to muster $100 billion in climate aid for poorer nations annually by 2020.

That goal that remains unmet and in any case is far below what will be needed, according to the report.

It is estimated that less developed economies require between $140 and $300 billion annually by 2030 to combat the impact of climate change. 

At present, out of every $18 committed to fighting climate change, only $1 is spent on adaptation — the rest goes on reducing carbon emissions that cause the problem.

Amnesty International on Wednesday urged Madagascar’s government and the rest of the world to step up relief efforts for the island nation’s drought-hit south.

More than a million people on Madagascar’s parched southern tip are on the brink of famine and some are already dying, the rights watchdog said.

The months-long drought, stoked by climate change, is the worst in four decades, it said in a report released ahead of the UN’s climate conference in Glasgow.

Amnesty called on rich nations to provide humanitarian aid and offer financial and technical support to help Madagascar adapt to climate change.

“The international community must immediately provide the people in Madagascar affected by the drought with increased humanitarian relief and additional funding for the losses and damages suffered,” said Agnes Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary general.

The drought afflicts a region where more than 90 percent of the population live in poverty, leaving many with little choice but to migrate.

“It is a grave injustice that impacts of climate change are felt by people in developing countries the most considering that they have contributed the least to the climate crisis,” Amnesty said.

The United Nations has repeatedly blamed climate change for the drought, which has forced people to boil weeds and cactus to survive.

Hoof prints in the mud, tree bark nibbled away: even if the newest residents of Romania’s Carpathian mountain forest shy away from visitors, their traces are there for those who know where to look.

They are signs of the success of a project to reintroduce bison to this region after a centuries-long absence, key to keeping the hairy giants off lists of critically endangered species.

Bison had all but been driven out of Europe by hunting and the destruction of its habitats, but their reappearance in Romania has brought back a key component of the region’s ecosystem.

Under gentle autumn sunshine on the edge of a centuries-old wood, young forest warden Matei Miculescu is on the lookout for members of the Carpathian herd. 

The animals can be hard to spot, having been tempted further into the forest by the abundant vegetation and the possibility of extending their habitat.

Miculescu says the animals are thriving in the forest, in contrast to captivity which “creates the risk of inbreeding” and weakens their chances of survival.

Nowadays, around 6,000 bison, Europe’s largest mammal and a distant cousin of the American buffalo, can be found on the continent.

Most of them are on the Polish-Belarussian border where efforts to revive the population got underway in the 1950s.

Romania welcomed bison back in 2014 in the southwestern Armenis region, more than 200 years after it was last seen there.

Born in captivity in other parts of Europe — where they had been given names like Kiwi, Bilbo and Mildred — they were transferred to Romania in 16 separate stages.

– Cutting human links –

Thanks to successful reproduction in the wild, “around 105 bison now live freely in the Tarcu mountains and have settled in well,” says Marina Druga, head of the project led jointly by the WWF and Rewilding Europe.

“In the past two years, there haven’t been any deaths in their ranks,” says Druga, explaining that the goal is to get to a population “of 250 individuals in five years’ time”.

The programme is well established: first the animals spend several weeks being re-acclimatised to life in the wild and are only then released and left to fend for themselves.

They can currently be found making use of around 8,000 hectares in a protected area which stretches over 59,000 hectares.

The southern Carpathians present ideal conditions: “a vast region with a thinly spread human population and no intensive agriculture,” says Wanda Olech-Piasecka from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Since 2014 there have been 38 bison calves born in the area.

“Without them, the project would have no future,” says Miculescu, who recognises each of the creatures by their horns of the colour of their fur.

But those running the project have resisted giving the calves names.

Since they have been born in the wild, all links with humans should be cut, explains Druga.

– Architects of the forest –

The WWF says the next step to make the population viable in the long term will be to introduce bison into other parts of the Carpathians and establish a network of populations.

Over the long term, the animals need a large habitat in order avoid conflict over territory with human populations or within their own herds.

Along with benefitting the bison themselves, advocates say that this example of “rewilding” is also a boon for the wider ecosystem, bringing benefits for some 600 species from microorganisms to large carnivores.

“They change the landscape and architecture of the forest by stopping the spread of invasive tree species, spreading seeds for hundreds of plants and creating paths smaller animals use to access food,” explains Druga. 

Weaker or sick members of the herd can themselves serve as prey for wolves or bears, who in turn will be less likely to stray into human settlements in search of food, a problem which has grown in recent years in Romania.

Even those who watch them closely have sometimes been surprised by the effects the bison’s presence can have.

“Birds collect discarded bits of fur to isolate their nests while frogs can use bison hoof prints to jump from one pond to another,” says Miculescu.

Latte drinkers may in the future be sipping on java sourced from a petri dish rather than a plantation, say scientists behind a new technique to grow what they hope to be sustainable coffee in a lab.

“It’s really coffee, because there is nothing else than coffee material in the product,” Heiko Rischer tells AFP, pointing to a dish of light brown powder.

His team of researchers at the Finnish technical research institute VTT believe their coffee would avoid many of the environmental pitfalls associated with the mass production of one of the world’s favourite drinks.

The coffee is not ground from beans, but instead grown from a cluster of coffee plant cells under closely controlled temperature, light and oxygen conditions in a bioreactor.

Once roasted, the powder can be brewed in exactly the same way as conventional coffee.

Rischer’s team used the same principles of cellular agriculture that are used to produce lab-grown meat, which does not involve the slaughter of livestock and which last year was given approval by Singapore authorities to go on sale for the first time.

“Coffee is of course a problematic product,” Rischer said, in part because rising global temperatures are making existing plantations less productive, driving farmers to clear ever larger areas of rainforest for new crops.

“There is the transport issue, the fossil fuel use… so it totally makes sense to look for alternatives,” Rischer said.

The team is carrying out a fuller analysis of how sustainable their product would be if manufactured on a large scale, but believe it would use less labour and fewer resources than conventional coffee.

“We know already that our water footprint, for example, is much less than what is needed for field growth,” Rischer said.

– Taste test –

For coffee lovers, the key to the success of the lab-grown variety will be in its taste — but so far only a specially trained panel of sensory analysts are authorised to try the new brew because of its status as a “novel food”.

For the time being, they are only allowed “to taste and spit, but not swallow it,” said research scientist Heikki Aisala, an expert in sensory perception who leads the testers on the project.

“Compared to regular coffee, the cellular coffee is less bitter,” which may be due to a slightly lower caffeine content, Aisala told AFP, adding that fruitiness is also less prominent in the lab-produced powder.

“But that being said, we really have to admit that we are not professional coffee roasters and a lot of the flavour generation actually happens in the roasting process,” Rischer said.

Other initiatives are also under way in search of a more sustainable alternative to coffee.

The Seattle startup Atomo in September announced it had raised $11.5 million in funding for its “molecular coffee”, which has the same flavour makeup as the drink, but is originated from other organic material than a coffee plant.

But surveys in the US and Canada have suggested widespread public wariness towards lab-grown food substitutes, although less so among younger consumers.

Despite the environmental benefits, some food policy specialists have warned that coffee producers’ livelihoods could be hit if there is a widespread move towards lab-produced products. 

In Helsinki, Rischer estimates it will be a minimum of four years before the team’s lab-grown coffee gains the regulatory approval and commercial backing to enable it to sit alongside its conventional cousin on the shelves.

The project has a special significance in Finland, which according to analyst group Statista ranks among the world’s top consumers of coffee, averaging 10 kilos (22 pounds) per person every year.

“There’s definitely a lot of enthusiasm for it,” Aisala said.

Tucked away in rural New Zealand, a multi-million dollar research facility is working to slash the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere by farm animals — saving the world one belch at a time.

Cattle and sheep are kept in perspex pens for two days per session as scientists carefully analyse every burp and fart that emerges from them at the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre.

“I never thought I’d make my living measuring the gas that comes out of animals’ breath,” the facility’s director Harry Clark told AFP.

The UN says agricultural livestock accounts for 14.5 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions generated by human activity and the centre — regarded as a world leader in livestock emissions research — is hopeful it can play a key role in tackling the problem. 

How authorities ended up funding the project to the tune of NZ$10 million (US$7.0 million) a year is a story of economic necessity and changing attitudes to climate change.

But it begins in the gut of ruminant livestock, which use microbes to partially digest their food by fermenting it in a compartment of their stomach before regurgitating it to be chewed as cud.

The process results in copious amounts of methane — a gas that has more than 80 times the ‘global warming potential’ of carbon dioxide, across 20 years according to the UN Economic Commission. 

There are estimated to be 1.5 billion cows on the planet, with each one capable of producing 500 litres (132 gallons) of the gas each day.

In addition, livestock urine produces nitrous oxide, another powerful climate pollutant.

– ‘Tantalising’ methane vaccine’ –

New Zealand’s farm-reliant economy means its proportion of agricultural emissions is much higher, accounting for around half of its greenhouse gases.

At Clark’s centre in Palmerston North, the major focus is on livestock methane, which accounts for almost 36 percent of the country’s total.

“New Zealand has a specific problem and it’s imperative we give farmers the tools and technologies to reduce their emissions,” Clark said.  

The facility, which is vetted by an ethics committee, is exploring research that includes selective breeding programmes to develop bloodlines of animals that naturally produce less gas.

Sheep have been bred that produce 10 percent less methane than average and Clark said researchers were trying to produce similar results with cattle.

Other projects include putting emission-inhibiting additives in livestock feed and even developing a harness or mask with filters that capture methane before it leaves the animal’s mouth.

But Clark said perhaps the most exciting prospect being developed in Palmerston North is a vaccine that reduces methane by targeting the microbes in the gut that produce the gas.

“It’s tantalisingly close, in the sense that it works in the laboratory but it doesn’t work in the animal yet,” he said, adding such a vaccine could be easily administered to flocks and herds worldwide, with an immediate impact on global emissions. 

It is a growing area of research globally: In the US, researchers are experimenting with probiotics for cattle, while in India, scientists are adding supplements to feed — with the aim of reducing the amount of methane produced. 

But critics warn this approach offers only short term benefits and “band-aid” solutions to major problems. 

“Reducing methane output while breeding still more methane-producing animals ignores animal suffering, deforestation, and the increased risk of diseases — including zoonotic viruses — all associated with animal agriculture,” said Aleesha Naxakis, spokesperson for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

– Global shift –

New Zealand’s government has committed to reducing livestock methane 10 percent by 2030 and 24-47 percent by 2050, compared with 2017 levels.

But some have questioned why the lucrative agricultural sector is treated differently to the rest of the economy, which has been set a target of zero net emissions by 2050.

Monitoring website Climate Action Tracker rates New Zealand’s climate policies as “highly insufficient”, citing the methane carve out as one of the main reasons.

“As we look toward COP26, unless governments take immediate steps to transition our global food system away from animals and towards plants, we’re setting fire to the only home we have,” warned Naxakis. 

Clark conceded ‘getting rid of livestock, and eating more plant-based foods’ would reduce agricultural emissions and make both people and the planet healthier, but said the situation was more complex. 

He said pursuing such a major shift, rather than working to lower livestock emissions, would have significant economic and social consequences on the sector worldwide.

Clark added that the government’s funding of research into livestock emissions was only partly to do with New Zealand’s reliance on the sector. 

“Sure there’s an element of self interest, but there’s a bit of altruism there as well,” he said.

“If we can find solutions that are applicable elsewhere, that help tackle emissions in China, the US, or wherever, then New Zealand could make a major contribution, as a small nation, to the global effort to reduce emissions.”

On a tiny island in Scotland’s far-flung Orkneys, thousands of sheep spend the winter munching on seaweed, a unique diet that scientists say offers hope for reducing planet-warming methane emissions.

Around 60 people share North Ronaldsay — an island just over 3 miles (5 kilometres) long, ringed by rocky beaches and turquoise waters off the north coast of mainland Britain — with the distinctive native sheep. 

Boasting brown, beige or black wool, the animals are hemmed into its foreshore owing to a large system of stone walls — called a sheep dyke — built in the early 19th century to keep them away from fields and roads.

The island’s crofters — people who live and work on so-called croft agricultural land — wanted to use every available space to grow crops and as pasture for cows.

The unintended result: in summer the sheep can nibble on grass, but by winter eating the plentiful seaweed is their only means of survival.

While some other mammals — including Shetland ponies native to the neighbouring island chain, and red deer — are known to snack on seaweed, scientists say that the North Ronaldsay sheep are unique worldwide for spending months eating only the marine plants.

– Methane reduction –

With the world facing a deepening climate emergency, they are increasingly seen by some as a case study that could lead to a breakthrough in methods for raising livestock, which is a major source of greenhouse gases.

Farm animals belch and fart methane gas which, though trivial sounding, is about 30 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.

Given the vast scale of the global meat industry, the issue has become a major focus for climate scientists — just as world leaders prepare to gather in the Scottish city Glasgow from Sunday for the crucial COP26 summit.

The seaweed diet of the Orkney sheep has an effect on their complex digestive system and appears to reduce the amount of methane produced.

“There’s different components in the seaweed that actually interfere with the process (of) how methane is made,” said Gordon McDougall, a researcher at The James Hutton Institute in Dundee in eastern Scotland who has been examining the sheep’s diet for two decades.

Researchers at The University of California, Davis, published results in March showing that a “bit of seaweed in cattle feed could reduce methane emissions from beef cattle as much as 82 percent”.  

David Beattie, another James Hutton Institute scientist, stressed there is huge interest in such innovation.

“There’s a really big movement within the industry to try and cut out the carbon footprint that the industry as a whole has,” he told AFP.

“I see seaweed playing a part in that.”

– Scale –

This would not necessarily mean cows and sheep switching to a diet entirely comprised of seaweed like the North Ronaldsay sheep, but it could supplement their usual feed.

Seaweed is not available in large enough quantities to feed so many animals, McDougall noted, and taking away too much from the sea could also damage the environment and ecosystems.

But the marine plants — good sources of minerals, vitamins and omega-3 fatty acids — could partly replace soy, which is heavily used in animal feed but transported for thousands of miles and linked to deforestation. 

Researchers still need to determine the types and quantities of seaweed which could be best suited to adding to feed. 

“And then, can you scale that up to a level where you’d actually have an effect on the overall UK farming?” said McDougall.

The plump North Ronaldsay sheep, who chow down strands of seaweed as if they were spaghetti, are set to keep providing a useful case study.