Climate change: what the North can do for the tropics | Minik Rosing | TEDxCannes

Climate change is a fact of life experienced by everyone in Minik Rosing’s native Greenland. His most recent research has identified a new Arctic resource produced by the melting glaciers – a fine rock flour that can re-fertilize poor tropical soils, increase crop yield and sustain economic development, while at the same time sequester CO2 and mitigate climate change. Finally, some good news from the North.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

(Sound of iceberg crumbling
and running into the ocean)

What you just witnessed was an iceberg
about the size of Manhattan

breaking off a cliff in Greenland
to drift out and melt into the ocean.

The Arctic region is melting
as it's heated twice as fast

as the rest of the planet,

and science every day brings us news,
alarming news, from the North.

Science tend to always bring us
bad news from the North.

Just yesterday it was announced

that this April is the warmest
we've ever experienced.

In certain parts of Greenland,

it was not one degree warmer,
not two degrees warmer,

it was nine and a half degrees warmer
than normal April's would be.

So I think the Arctic has become a symbol
of global change and pending disaster.

I was myself born in Greenland
a very long time ago.

I came from Greenland to Denmark
and the U.S. to become a scientist,

to study geology with the one purpose
of being able to come back

and do my fieldwork every summer
in the vast Arctic nature.

I think it's kind of misleading

that the Arctic has gotten this emblem
of being a symbol of disaster

because the reason why we,
as scientists, go into the Arctic

is because the Arctic is the most
wonderful region on the planet.

It is the most beautiful place
and every scientist I know,

they go to the Arctic
with that one particular reason:

to be in this beautiful place.

In contrast to what we see, those of us
who live in the Arctic, of course,

industries see another property
of the Arctic: they see opportunity.

The heating of the Arctic
is supposed to give access

to new mineral resources;
oil, gas, gold, fish, whatever,

and the business plan seems to be,

"Let us go and exploit and scavenge
the last drop of everything

that is left in that last place on Earth

that has not yet
been destroyed by humankind."

I think the question
that I would like to pose today is:

Is that really the best idea
we can come up with

and do exactly the same
that has destroyed everywhere else

in the last place
that has not been destroyed yet?

My suggestion is that we cannot risk
to do those vast expanses

of undestroyed nature
that the Arctic still possesses,

and we have to use our research capacity
to try and come up with something

that is more smart, and more sustainablem
and more long-term benefit for mankind.

I suggest that instead of doing
what we had done everywhere else,

we should do something new,

and we should find out
what are the true values of the Arctic.

I have a specific suggestion,

a method that I think could be a way
of using the melting of the Arctic region

to actually fight problems
otherwhere on the planet.

One of the major problems we have
beside the climate change, of course,

is inequality and food security.

If we look at the wealth on Earth, we know
it's unevenly distributed on the planet,

some regions are rich, some are poor.

The rich regions, which are not
what's shown on this map,

but could as well have been,
this map shows soil quality.

It shows where the crops that,
as coming from the fields,

are richest on the planet.

You see that richness couples completely
with where the soil was good.

The reason for this is not
that the soil has always been like that,

it is because the soil was replenished
with minerals during the last ice age.

Ice came down from the north,
scoured the rocks,

turned it into a fine powder
and dumped it in front of the glaciers

and fertilized the grounds across
North America, Europe, and Asia,

and that's where everything
that feeds humankind today grows.

On the other hand,
if you look into the tropics,

you have red barren soils
with very poor fertility,

and that is the reason
why people in the tropics are poor,

why we have malnutrition
and undernutrition,

because these soils are basically
impossible to grow crops on.

My suggestion is very simple.

In Greenland, where we have the last bit
of the ice cap in the Northern Hemisphere,

and it's melting right now,
it's been melting forever,

but now it's melting faster,

it's flushing out billions of tons
of very finely ground rock flour

that contains all the mineral nutrients
that are missing in the tropics.

The idea is that we take that mud,
this material from Greenland,

transferred to the tropical regions
and spread it on the ground,

where it will re-fertilize the soil
and provide for new wealth

and new development in these countries.

At the same time the Arctic region

is also, of course, needing
development and new trades

but rather than doing the same again
as we have done everywhere else,

we could do something
to develop the Arctic

that at the same time does something good
in the rest of the world.

My suggestion is again
that we take the mud

coming out of the glaciers in Greenland
and take it to the tropics,

because the mud that you find in Greenland
is unlike any other mud you find.

The mud you have in the Amazon,
the Mississippi, or any other major river,

is what's leftover after all the nutrients
have been sucked out of the ground,

and the leftovers
are flushed down the river.

Whereas in Greenland, it has,
intact all the minerals

that plants need to grow in.

In Greenland this is dumped by the rivers
in the fjords, the valleys, and the lakes,

and it's very easy to take it
without making a large industry

without having
any chemical treatment, anything.

You basically just take up this stuff
and take it to where it's needed.

That, of course, begs a new question:

Is that really a good idea to take
millions of tons of something

from someplace on Earth
and take it to some other part of Earth?

Isn't that another climate threat?

Is that not something that's going
to make our problem even greater?

My suggestion is that it's not,
because the good news is

that the mechanism by which
the nutrients are released

from this material to the plants
is a process we call "weathering":

weathering is when something, minerals,

react the carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere.

We take this, spread it
on the tropical soils.

What happens is that it will start
reacting the CO2 from the atmosphere

and draw it out of the atmosphere.

We can calculate that
by transporting this material

from the Arctic to the tropics,

we actually emit less CO2 in the process

than we consume by the reaction
of this material with the atmosphere.

My suggestion is that Greenlandic
glacier mud can be a solution

to problems like hunger
and poverty in the tropics,

also it will lower the incentive

to cut rainforest to make
new land for agriculture.

Therefore I will suggest

that the Arctic could be
a source of good news finally.

I will say that Greenland
is not called "Greenland" for nothing,

it's actually the place
that could make parts of the Earth

that is now barren green
as we see Greenland is here.

So it's time for good news from the North.

(Applause)