Professor Mark Sutton from the UK’s Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) will lead a new $60m (£47m) initiative on nitrogen management to boost the sustainability credentials of farming.

The initiative aims to improve management of the nitrogen cycle, to reduce pollution to air and water sources, and boost biodiversity, which is affected by nitrogen pollution.

Although nitrogen is an essential element for life on earth, and about 80% of the air we breath is made up of unreactive nitrogen (N2), human activity has affected its natural cycling through the Earth’s ecosystems since the mid-nineteenth century. Burning fossil fuels and emissions from agriculture are the largest source of nitrogen pollution. Emissions from farming come from overuse of fertilisers, or run-off into watercourses.

In water, reactive nitrogen can cause bacteria and algae to flourish, stripping oxygen and causing other creatures in the water to suffocate. Released into air, nitrogen compounds have a higher global warming potential than carbon dioxide.

Aiming to tackle this problem, Prof Sutton will head up a group being put together by the UN, alongside a number of scientific institutions. Called International Nitrogen Management System (INMS), the global initiative was launched on Monday at a meeting in Australia.

Speaking on Monday, as the initiative was unveiled, the UN Environment Programme’s executive director Erik Solheim said, “This initiative is a big opportunity to pull together a global and critical mass of science on the nitrogen cycle. We can start a sustained process that gets science, governments, businesses and civil society working together to build common understanding, and therefore deliver real change.

"The investment demonstrates that we are serious in getting to grips with the world’s nitrogen cycle. One of the aims of INMS is to show how management of the global nitrogen cycle will deliver measurable benefits for oceans, climate, the atmosphere and land ecosystems. By joining up in this way, we will develop a much stronger foundation for action."

Commenting on his appointment as chair, CEH’s Mark Sutton said, “Nitrogen pollution represents a huge waste of a valuable resource. In the EU alone, the fertilizer value of nitrogen losses from agriculture is around Euro 14 billion per year. This is equivalent to losing 25% of the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) budget (or 10% of the entire EU budget) up in smoke or down the drain.”