Supporting NIO’s LOHAFEX Mission

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What happens if algae on oceans which lack Iron for growth are provided a little more Iron, that too in a small scale study? When they grow and then sink to the ocean bottom they carry the organic matter with them. Thus effectively they capture and remove the atmospheric carbon dioxide - a major green house gas causing global warming. Perhaps the costs of removing Carbon by planting trees is much more than doing it through the algae. But how would we know the costs unless we experiment? Then why people should raise objections?

After India’s stupendous and pioneer success with Chandrayan 1 the world became jealous of our scientific community. Forces, which just could not see India’s coming of age were waiting to hit at the right time. They did it by successfully by stalling LOHAFEX-India’s potential passport to big ocean science- a door to carbon capture and immobilisation technologies. It is a trillion dollars market of future.

LOHAFEX was not conceived overnight. NIO discovered an interesting name for its ocean Iron fertilization experiment. Loha stands for iron and FEX stands for fertilization experiment. If it is just the application of precautionary principle on basis of which a group of scientists and NGOs are opposing the Indo-German joint international ocean fertilization experiment then we can understand it. But it seems that the opposition to LOHAFEX is sophisticated politics through proxies-possibly instigated by countries, which are not part of the international expedition and are afraid of losing their monopoly over such technologies.

There is a potential economic and industrial angle to ocean Iron fertilization. If it succeeds then it would be a revolution in global carbon market. So naturally the opposition may stem from rather strategic concerns than ecological. Opposition to LOHAFEX seems to be a classic case of a new kind of global environmental geopolitics tied to global carbon market and trading in Carbon credits. What is at stake? Just 20 metric tonne of Iron sulphate to be dissolved in ocean spread over 300 sq km. This is a negligible, miniscule quantity-but even then people are having nightmares. Every minute the seismically active ocean floor may be getting a flux of millions of tones of Iron sulphides. But the opposition is to human interference in ocean ecosystem. Perhaps people are having the “butterfly effect” in mind.

What they would have done if a cargo ship carrying larger quantities of Iron sulphate were to meet with an accident and discharge the chemical in water? Quietly the incident would have been forgotten-as an accident. But peer reviewed big science that too in the field of marine ecology is open to public scrutiny. Accidents may be condoned but scientific errors and mistakes in any controlled experiment may not be tolerated.

NIO intended to launch LOHAFEX from German research vessel “Polarstern” in the southwest Atlantic from January 7 to March 17, 2009. NIO website says that their interdisciplinary team of 48 scientists has 29 from India 10 from Germany, three from Italy and two each from Spain and UK. A French and a Chilean scientist has also joined the expedition. They will closely collaborate in monitoring the algal bloom expected to grow in the fertilized patch of ocean and studying its effects on the chemistry and biology for at least 45 days. NIO claims that-“The results of LOHAFEX will be of great interest to both ocean ecologists and geochemists.

Indeed, there is reason to believe that fertilizing the Southern Ocean with trace amounts of iron could help in transferring some of the CO2 currently accumulating at an alarming rate in the atmosphere, to the deep ocean for a few centuries. NIO claims that ultimately- “Carbon transported in particles that sink below 3,000 m is sequestered for centuries and the portion buried in the sediments for much longer.” NIO intended to conduct in a pre-selected eddy but the size of the patch will be twice as large – 300 km2 fertilized with 20 tonnes of iron sulfate.” It was unusual to receive an appeal from leaders of the expedition Wajih Naqvi, Victor Smetacek of LOHAFEX team. It said-“.

LOHAFEX has been on the planning board since 2005, and information about it has been in the public domain for a long time. However, we did not receive a single objection to it from anyone until a day after we sailed from Cape Town. Since then an apparently well-planned and well-timed pressure campaign has been launched by some NGOs who are misleading and scaring people about our intentions. One of the major arguments of these groups is that our experiment will break a moratorium on OIF following the decision (COP9) taken by the UN Convention for Biological Diversity (CBD) in May 2008.

However, both the CBD and the London Convention and Protocol in their meeting during October 27-31, 2008 have specifically allowed “legitimate scientific experiments”. Based on this, the Governments of India and Germany had accorded approval to LOHAFEX in December 2008. The other argument is that LOHAFEX will have a disastrous effect on marine ecosystems. This is of course preposterous. However, due to the pressure exerted by these groups, the German Government has put our experiment on hold until a risk assessment of our proposal has been evaluated by two independent scientific organizations.

Support from the scientific community will greatly help in differentiating our legitimate experiment from that ignominious attempt to enter fertilization in the carbon credit market. Indeed, some NGOs are claiming that this is also our intention. The directors of our institutes and the government research organizations supporting us, not to mention ourselves on board Polarstern, would benefit from support expressed by reputed scientists. We are not asking you to support OIF as a possible geo-engineering technique but merely to state that an experiment such as our’s will not have any deleterious effect on the environment and is justified by its potential contributions to basic science. A brief letter of support could be faxed or scanned to either Dr Karin Lochte director, Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), Bremerhaven, Germany, (+49-471-4831-1102, Karin.Lochte@awi.de) and/or to Dr Satish Shetye, director, National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), Goa , India (+91 832 2450 602, shetye@nio.org).”

As an ecologist myself, I endorse this appeal and request Indians, especially students and teachers of science and engineering to flood them with supporting letters/mails.