New (October 26, 2009): 'Low-carbon' cocoa project kicks off

Douala, Cameroon, October 26, 2009 - Together with CocoaMasters, the Biochar Fund has launched a project to test the effectiveness of biochar on the growth of cocoa seedlings, within a context of highly integrated agroforestry systems.

If biochar helps cocoa trees to grow healthier, faster and in an organic manner, then it may offer an alternative to the establishment of monocultures, which depend on deforestation and the destruction of ecosystem services. 

Biochar may also offer a way into the emerging markets of 'low-carbon' farm products and organic chocolate because biochar both sequesters carbon in a permanent manner and limits the need for agrochemicals.

Read more.

New (September 10, 2009): Cameroon trial data show strong improvement in maize yield - summary report

Kumba, Cameroon, September 10, 2009 - Since December 2008, more than 1500 subsistence farmers in Cameroon's South-West Region (SWR) have been participating in the largest-ever field trial testing the effects of biochar on crop productivity. The first results of this ongoing experiment, based on maize planted in a large series of plots, are now available.

The data can be described as 'remarkable', in that they demonstrate how biochar consistently helps to boost crop productivity in tropical soils, sometimes in a spectacular manner.

The preliminary results suggest that biochar may offer a solution to hunger and food insecurity amongst the world's poorest, as well as to soil depletion and tropical deforestation. 

Read the SUMMARY REPORT, or go straight to the DATA PAGE or to the PICTURE PAGE .

New (July 19 2009): Biochar Fund winner of Manchester Report

The Biochar Fund is pleased to announce that its concept has been selected as one of the top-10 ideas for fighting climate change, at a recent event that will result in the publication of The Manchester Report. This report is a joint initiative by The Guardian and the Manchester International Festival, and aims to unite the world's most innovative concepts to tackle global warming. It will be presented to policy makers ahead of the crucial climate meeting in Copenhagen, later this year. Other recipients will include British MPs, American members of Congress and policymakers in India, China and other regions; business leaders, think tanks and many others.

The fund's managing director, Laurens Rademakers, pitched his concept in front of a live audience and a scientific panel in Manchester Townhall on July 4th. Nineteen other finalists did so too, representing fascinating ideas ranging from thorium nuclear power reactors and sub-marine anaerobic digestors, to giant solar mirrors in the Sahara, renewable energy bonds, and efficient cooking stoves. In the end, the 10 best ideas were selected and will form The Manchester Report. Read more.

The Guardian: Manchester Report - Video: Laurens Rademakers on biochar - The full list of 20 ideas - The top-10

New (June 21, 2009): One sixth of humanity is hungry - more than ever before

World hunger is projected to reach a historic high in 2009 with 1 020 million people going hungry every day, according to new estimates published by FAO. [...]

"Many of the world's poor and hungry are smallholder farmers in developing countries. Yet they have the potential not only to meet their own needs but to boost food security and catalyse broader economic growth. To unleash this potential and reduce the number of hungry people in the world, governments, supported by the international community, need to protect core investments in agriculture so that smallholder farmers have access not only to seeds and fertilisers but to tailored technologies, infrastructure, rural finance, and markets," said Kanayo F. Nwanze, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). Read more .

New (June 20, 2009): Biochar Fund selected to present its concept for The Manchester Report

Louvain, June 20, 2009 – The Biochar Fund is pleased to announce that its concept has been selected as one of the twelve ideas to be presented during the Manchester International Festival's event titled "The Manchester Report". The event is an initiative by the Guardian. Its aim is to present the best and most innovative ideas to fight climate change. The selected concepts will be scrutinized by an expert panel and by a live audience.

The Manchester Report will be distributed to policymakers to help shape the debate leading up to December’s critical United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. It will be prominently promoted by the Guardian and the BBC, raising awareness of the most promising schemes. Read more .

May 20, 2009: Biochar project wins major funding for protection of rainforests in Congo

Louvain - Kinshasa, May 20, 2009 – The Biochar Fund and its Congolese partner ADAPEL are pleased to announce that their project to protect tropical rainforests has been selected by the Congo Basin Forest Fund (CBFF). More than 200 organizations answered the CBFF's first call for proposals, but after what it described as "an extremely competitive selection process", only 6 projects were successful.

The Congo Basin Forest Fund is an initiative by the British and Norwegian governments, aimed at protecting the unique tropical rainforests of Central Africa and their biodiversity and ecosystem services. The fund is presided by Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai. This fund has now awarded ADAPEL and Biochar Fund 300,000 euros (US$ 407,000) for their project. Read more .

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March 28, 2009: Biochar Fund successfully completes first phase of pilot project in Cameroon

The Biochar Fund is pleased to announce that it has successfully completed the first phase of its pilot project in the South-West Region of Cameroon, Central Africa. There, 75 grassroots groups of subsistence farmers are testing the effects of biochar in different soil types.

After two months of producing char from a variety of widely available feedstocks (palm fronds, cassava stems, weeds and three types of wood), the product was distributed amongst the farmer associations, in different villages around the town of Kumba. The groups were then assisted in establishing their small test plots, on which they currently grow maize, a local staple crop. Despite erratic rains, the maize has emerged and looks healthy on most of the test plots.

December 11, 2008: In an important achievement for the biochar community, the UNCCD announced at the COP-14 in Poznan, Poland, that it will submit a proposal to get biochar officially recognized as climate change mitigation and adaptation strategy.

December 04, 2008: Biochar featured in Time Magazine. 

November 15, 2008: Biochar Fund featured in "Nature et Progrès", a leading French magazine on sustainable agriculture.

The Biochar Fund is a social profit fund that completely changes the way in which chronic hunger, deforestation, energy access and climate change are addressed amongst the world's poorest populations: small subsistence farmers at the tropical forest frontier. The fund's systemic interventions create a synergy that breaks and reverses an environmentally destructive, unsustainable and socially catastrophic land use cycle. By doing so, we help communities gain the knowledge, tools and financial means needed to lift themselves out of poverty once and for all. Simultaneously, the biochar concept has the capacity to help tackle climate change in a significant and cost-effective way. It allows us to actively remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The key to the system is the utilisation of biochar to restore the health of nutrient-poor, acidic tropical soils, and to let sustainable agroforestry systems take root in these cured soils. Biochar is a revolutionary integrated soil management strategy that doubles as a carbon sink. Soils amended with biochar initiate a sustainable and highly productive land-use cycle: land becomes fertile, can be used productively for years, boosts crop yields, and thus helps eliminate both hunger and destructive "slash-and-burn" based shifting cultivation. Biochar also makes it possible to reclaim abandoned, depleted land and highly weathered soils, thus further reducing pressures on forests. Because of this, the Fund helps reduce deforestation and both the biodiversity loss and emissions that go with it, in a very pragmatic and effective way. We tackle the problem at the roots. Contrary to other, "top down" schemes aimed at slowing deforestation, ours is a "bottom up" approach that directly benefits people on the ground in a concrete manner. Conservation efforts are thus firmly rooted amongst the communities living at the forest margins.

Biochar not only boosts the fertility of the tropical problem soils, it also makes for a stable, manageable and easily measurable carbon sink for which carbon credits are available. Funds obtained for the carbon sequestration effort offer an additional source of income for the farmers, which is used to finance the synergy and guarantees the conservation of forests and their ecosystem services.

What is more, the production of biochar in village-scale pyrolysis plants is coupled to the generation of carbon-negative electricity, making renewable, low-carbon and decentralised energy services available to rural communities currently without access to modern energy. This transition limits the need for primitive, inefficient biomass use (burning on open fires) and dramatically reduces associated emissions. The switch to electricity also ends the health problems caused by indoor air pollution, which is responsible for an estimated 1.5 million deaths per year, mainly women and children.

Once the synergy between soil health and increased crop production has been achieved, the world's poorest farmers become carbon managers who keep adding biochar to their soils. The biochar is obtained from the residual biomass that grows on their now highly fertile fields. Since the soils become far more fertile, food crop yields improve dramatically, as does the output of residual biomass resulting from the higher productivity. More biomass means more biochar can be sequestered and more electricity can be generated. This ultimately leads to an integrated system that actively removes CO2 from the atmosphere.

As such, synergetic biochar systems can lead to drastically improved, sustainable agriculture and the elimination of hunger; make destructive "slash-and-burn" techniques and deforestation a thing of the past; provide access to modern and "negative emissions" energy; and result in strongly reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

All these significant social and environmental benefits can be achieved in a self-sustained way. The reversal of the unsustainable land use cycle allows the poorest communities to improve their livelihoods to such an extent that they can engage in income-generating activities: they can at last produce a surplus of food and obtain funds from managing the biochar carbon sink.

The Biochar Fund takes a phased but integrated approach: first, we help resource-poor farming communities gain access to modern agricultural inputs, markets and knowledge, which allows them to end hunger in one or two seasons; secondly, we help them implement the biochar soil management system to consolidate the gains; in a third step, we help connect the farmers who now manage a stable carbon sink, to global (voluntary) carbon markets; finally, the now resilient communities can acquire a small-scale pyrolysis system which offers them access to modern, renewable and carbon-negative energy and allows for the efficient production of biochar.

Each phase is implemented only after robust results from the previous phase are obtained. This ensures the communities have the means to finance the following step and fully claim ownership of it. The Biochar Fund's interventions thus offer a framework that allows the world's poorest to build self-sustained communities capable of meeting the most basic of needs: sufficient food, means to practise sustainable and income-generating agriculture, and modern energy services.

Welcome to the Biochar Fund.