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Business News/ Politics / News/  Livestock methane emissions higher than earlier estimates
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Livestock methane emissions higher than earlier estimates

Livestock methane emissions higher than earlier estimates

Rumbling ranking: India has a livestock population of 485 million, the largest in the world, emitting 11.75 million tonnes of methane annually. Prashanth Vishwanathan / BloombergPremium

Rumbling ranking: India has a livestock population of 485 million, the largest in the world, emitting 11.75 million tonnes of methane annually. Prashanth Vishwanathan / Bloomberg

Bangalore: In the climate change debate, when it comes to ranking culprits behind methane emission, Indian livestock are reckoned to leave transport and other sectors far behind.

Ruminants of all kinds are estimated to make for half such emissions in the country but none of the several estimates made have made for a national and regional picture.

Now, scientists at the Space Applications Centre, or SAC, in Ahmedabad have prepared the first national livestock methane emission inventory using the latest (2003) livestock census.

Rumbling ranking: India has a livestock population of 485 million, the largest in the world, emitting 11.75 million tonnes of methane annually. Prashanth Vishwanathan / Bloomberg

The new estimate inches closer to the one by the international scientific body Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which calculates it at 12.9mt, a figure that has been widely debated by Indian researchers as being too high.

One of the reasons for the increased estimate, say researchers K.R. Manjunath and Abha Chhabra, is that between 1997 and 2003, buffalo population in the country increased by eight million, 50% of these are adult dairy buffalo which emit the highest level of methane among livestock categories. The researchers argue that this inventory is “realistic, reliable and statistically more sound" as for the first time feed and fodder area has been taken into account as is regional variation in emission. Their work has been reported in the latest issue of Current Science, the fortnightly journal of the Indian Academy of Sciences.

The average methane flux of an animal is estimated at 74.4kg per hectare. Regionally, the three high methane emitter states are Uttar Pradesh (14.9%), Rajasthan (9.1%) and Madhya Pradesh (8.5%).

The methane emission from livestock is likely to only go up as population expands and incomes increase, rapidly increasing pressure on the country’s dairies.

The Indian dairy industry is forecast to grow to Rs5.21 trillion by 2011, up from Rs2.27 trillion in 2005, according to industry year book Dairy India 2007, the latest such estimate.

The SAC estimate could help address feed quality strategies—Manjunath says further studies are being planned —to reduce methane produced in livestock digestive tracts by microbes called methanogens consuming carbon dioxide and hydrogen, which are by-products of digestion.

“A national inventory was long needed for sound policy as we try out various ways to balance the ration of livestock at the grassroots level," says K.K. Singhal, head, dairy cattle nutrition division at National Dairy Research Institute, or NDRI, in Karnal, Haryana.

Singhal says NDRI, National Dairy Development Board and others are researching new herbal additives such as shikakai, a shrub that lathers in powdered form and finds use in shampoos, to reduce methane production in animals.

As part of the aggregated methane inventory under the Earth Observation Programme of the Indian Space Research Organization (Isro), Manjunath and his colleagues have also readied a study on methane emission from rice.

To be published soon, the new finding will challenge the controversial but widely publicized research in Science in August 2005 that blamed the Asian rice ecosystems as major methane emitters. The study “shows that rice is not the greenhouse gas culprit as it has been made out to be", says Manjunath.

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Published: 15 Mar 2009, 09:53 PM IST
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