Assessing marginal abatement cost for greenhouse gas emissions from livestock production in China and Europe - accounting for uncertainties

Climate change is probably the most challenging threat to mankind. International agreements have acknowledged the fact that anthropogenic GHG emissions must be reduced significantly to adhere to a maximum global warming of 2°C. The livestock sector plays a key role in achieving this target as it is a significant source of GHG emissions. While the livestock sector offers significant GHG reduction potential, it is currently neglected in international and national mitigation efforts. Therefore, scientific research must guide mitigation policy decisions with evidence of cost-efficient abatement potential that can be achieved through various mitigation technologies. Marginal Abatement Cost Curves (MACC) are an analytical tool for informing policy makers about the cost-effectiveness (CE) of mitigation. MACCs provide a relatively clear representation of a complicated issue based on their graphical design that prioritises various mitigation options in terms of their CE of abatement and enables assessment of total GHG reduction under a budget constraint. However, developing a MACC involves considerable data collection, depends on various interdisciplinary information sources and the methodology is subject to several limitations. These factors can result in uncertainties in marginal abatement cost (MAC) results, the assessment of which is often neglected in MACC literature. This research shows the main GHG emission sources in livestock production and possible mitigation options to reduce GHG emissions from these sources. After elaborating the MACC methodology, advantages, disadvantages and limitation of the engineering MACC are shown. This allows understanding the relevance of assessing and reporting uncertainty of MACCs. Two engineering MACCs are developed that show the CE abatement potentials available in the Chinese livestock sector and European Union 15 (EU-15) dairy sector in 2020, with emphasis on dietary mitigation options. The requirement of assessing CE of abatement for individual mitigation options is highlighted by separate derivation of technical and economic abatement potential for the EU-15 dairy sector. For the Chinese MACC, a scenario analysis (SA) and for the European MACC, a Monte Carlo (MC) simulation are utilised to show the relevance of assessing uncertainty in MACCs. To provide further evidence, the overall range of CE estimates for eight mitigation options found in relevant MACC literature is presented. This allows the generation of probability distribution functions of CE for each mitigation option with kernel density estimation (KDE). The results from this study show the significance of livestock and dairy production related GHG emissions in China and Europe, respectively. In China, baseline GHG emissions of livestock production are projected to increase significantly, while these of the EU-15 dairy production are predicted to decrease by 2020. It was found that enteric fermentation is the largest GHG emission source from dairy production and should be focus of mitigation policies. Both case studies showed mitigation options that offer abatement potential at high CE. Priorities should be given to biomass gasification, breeding techniques and feed supplements as tea saponins and probiotics for the Chinese livestock sector, and to animal selection, reduced tillage and dietary probiotics for the EU-15 dairy sector. The scenario analysis reveals that mid-term projections for the Chinese livestock sector are varying strongly, and utilising key variables from different projections has a significant impact on MAC results which changes the ranking of the mitigation options. The MC simulation shows the contribution of some model inputs to the uncertainty of abatement at negative cost and a high model output uncertainty regarding measure’s CE for most mitigation options. However, the ranking of the mitigation options remains stable. The range of MAC estimates for 8 mitigation options in the agricultural sector is high and variables like ‘study quality’ or ‘study location’ do not change this. The KDE was further used to rank the mitigations options based on their probability of being reported as cost-negative and shows that measures affecting soil N2O and carbon sequestration are reported to be more cost-efficient as compared to measures focusing on manure management. Based on these finding, the impact of study designs on MAC estimates and lack of communication uncertainty in MACC literature are discussed. Uncertainties that are underpinning MACC results can have significant impacts on CE and abatement potentials. To increase utilisation of MACCs by knowledge users, MACC research must prioritise assessment, quantification and report of uncertainties, compare results within the scientific literature and publish data and assumption of the MACC transparently

Developing climate-smart livestock systems in Inner Mongolia, China

‘Climate-smart’ is the term coined to define agricultural systems that are resilient to climate change, and offer efficient emissions mitigation potential without compromising on productivity, food security and livelihoods. As part of the implementation of such systems, this study developed a Marginal Abatement Cost Curve (MACC) for greenhouse gas emission mitigation for a grassland system in Inner Mongolia, China. We identified two baseline emission scenarios and three abatement measures, namely, shorter lambing time, prohibited grazing, and reduced stocking rates. The study region showed a high and costefficient abatement potential of 62.5 and 32 Kilotonnes (Kt) of CO2eq for each baseline, respectively and each Abatement measure lead to cost savings for the herders. Reduced stocking rates provided the largest mitigation potential. Sensitivity analysis showed how increasing input and livestock product prices have consequences for measure adoption

Human serum activates the tegument of female schistosomes and supports recovery from Praziquantel

Schistosomiasis is one of the most devastating parasitic disease in the world. Schistosoma spp. survive for decades within the vasculature of their human hosts. They have evolved a vast array of mechanisms to avoid the immune reaction of the host. Due to their sexual dimorphism, with the female worm lying within the gynecophoric canal of the male worm, it is the male that is exposed to the immediate environment and the soluble parts of the host's immune response. To understand how the worms are so successful in fending off the immune attacks of the host, comparative analyses of both worm sexes in human serum (with or without Praziquantel) were performed using scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and immunohistochemistry. Further, gene expression analyses of tegument-specific genes were performed. Following the incubation in human serum, males and females out of pairs show morphological changes such as an altered structure of the pits below the surface and an increased number of pits per area. In addition, female schistosomes presented a marked tuft-like repulsion of their opsonized surface. The observed resistance of females to Praziquantel seemed to depend on active proteins in the human serum. Moreover, different expression profiles of tegument-specific genes indicate different functions of female_single and male_single teguments in response to human serum. Our results indicate that female schistosomes developed different evasion strategies toward the host's immune system in comparison to males that might lead to more robustness and has to be taken into account for the development of new anti-schistosomal drugs

Non-parabolic shift of phase boundaries on nanoscale in binary systems with restricted solubility: theory and experiment

L