The Biochar Fund creates a synergy that radically changes the livelihoods of some of the world's poorest communities in multiple ways.

1. We eliminate hunger permanently

By making highly infertile soils fertile through biochar and basic inputs, we eliminate hunger and food insecurity permanently.

Biochar as an intergrated soil management technique is the key agronomic component of our intervention. But this strategy is part of a larger action that involves the following elements:

• -improving access to basic but modern farming inputs (organic and inorganic fertilizers, quality seeds, herbicides and pesticides)
• -basic farm training and extension services by a field officer; field officers are trained by professional agronomists
• -improving access to output markets: because of the Fund's intervention, our farmers are able to grow a food surplus; we help them market this surplus in local markets
  
• -permanently fertile soils allow farmers to diversify their production and make a transition from subsistence farming to growing more lucrative crops

Our action makes it possible to eliminate hunger after one growing season. Over the next seasons, deeper knowledge about agriculture is gained by our communities, which allows them to consolidate the results and to sustain themselves.  

Read more about hunger in the developing world. 

2. We slow down deforestation drastically

With biochar, saving forests becomes economically viable. Biochar tackles the key causes of deforestation at the roots. We help subsistence farmers who currently practise an unsustainable form of shifting cultivation to make the transition towards a more stable and income-generating form of agriculture. 

Because the biochar soil management system cures the problem soils once and for all, our farmers can grow an equal amount of food on far less land. They no longer need to slash-and-burn -- which in itself is a labor-intensive process -- but can continuously improve their biochar amended plots. 

The incentive to utilize the same piece of land comes from two facts:

• -the biochar land is far more fertile than any new land obtained from slash-and-burn; the investments that went into curing the soil warrant its permanent usage and discourages investments in alternative, more destructive land use strategies
  
• -the biochar land has become a stable carbon sink for which the communities receive carbon credits; the more biochar is added to the same soil, the higher its fertility 

Research, trials and estimates show that for each hectare of biochar amended (highly acid, nutrient poor) soil that is managed in an integrated way, at least 6 hectares of tropical forest and the carbon contained in them can be saved.

Obviously, the conservation of rainforests, their ecosystem services as well as their extreme biodiversity is important on a regional, national and global level. The preservation of these forests is in the interest of mankind as a whole.

Read more about deforestation in the tropics.

3. We reduce greenhouse gas emissions radically

The biochar system establishes a permanent, manageable and measurable carbon sink. This carbon sink can be created in an easy, efficient and cost-effective manner. We help our farmers gain the tools, knowledge and market intelligence to obtain carbon credits for the sinks they establish. Part of these funds are consequently invested in the acquisition of a village-scale pyrolysis plant that delivers modern, renewable energy services to the community and generates biochar in an optimal manner.

Biochar can be added to the carbon sink on a continuous basis. The more is added, the more fertile the problem soils become. 

Our interventions result in two additional greenhouse gas emission reduction streams:

• -because biochar amended soils make land permanently productive, it allows farmers to phase out slash-and-burn practises and the large GHG emissions associated with deforestation.

• -the biochar system is coupled to efficient char production in pyrolysis plants that simultaneously yield renewable electricity. The fuel used is made up of field residues: biomass from the improved food crop production. This way, communities no longer have to rely on inefficient energy production. Currently, they use wood fuels gathered unsustainably from the forest and burn them on open fires. This is a wasteful practise which releases a considerable amount of emissions. The switch to electricity eliminates most of these carbon emissions.

These three simultaneous GHG emission reductions – the carbon sink, the avoided deforestation, the switch to renewable electricity – make for a synergy that actively removes CO2 from the atmosphere.

Scientists have estimated that, by itself, biochar implemented on a global scale could reverse climate change by removing large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. We contribute to actualising part of this potential.

On a side note, biochar has been shown to reduce nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from agriculture in a consistent and very significant way. N2O emissions mainly result from the use of nitrogen fertilizers. Because the Biochar Fund introduces such fertilizers to farmers who did not previously use them, the N2O emission reductions are not taken into account in our GHG emissions balance.

4. We eliminate energy poverty 

Access to modern energy services is crucial for sustainable development. Electricity offers people access to information, education, health, and security. It allows people to heat, cool, cook, light their homes, and power electric devices on-demand. Electricity allows farmers to grow crops and process them in a more efficient way. Electricity relieves women and children from heavy chores.

None of the communities we work with currently have access to electricity. They burn unsustainably gathered wood fuels and dung on open fires. This ad-hoc use of inefficient energy presents a range of environmental and health problems. One of those is indoor air pollution. According to the World Health Organisation, this 'killer in the kitchen' is responsible for more than 1.5 million avoidable deaths each year, mainly women and children.

There are many reasons why the vast majority of people in Central Africa does not have access to electricity. Rural electrification is not high on policy makers' agendas, because they assume that the poor do not have the purchasing power to buy modern energy services. There is also a range of infrastructural problems that makes connecting rural communities to the grid very costly. But as long as the poor do not have access to electricity, they cannot develop and acquire the necessary purchasing power to buy modern energy services. This is a classic catch-22.

The Biochar Fund radically changes this equation by providing a decentralised, low-cost and renewable energy solution that is part of the larger system. Pyrolysis based electricity-generation, using locally available residual biomass from food crops grown on improved soils, is by far the most cost-effective of all renewables.

Biochar is usually considered a low-value “waste” product obtained from pyrolysis. But in our conditions, amongst farmers cultivating nutrient-poor acidic soils, the biochar becomes a very valuable soil amendment. Moreover, its addition to soils creates a carbon sink that yields carbon credits.

Because of our interventions, rural communities become more resilient and acquire the means with which they can afford to buy modern energy services. The Biochar Fund thus solves one of the most difficult problems in the developing world: providing access to energy amongst rural communities.

Read more about energy in the developing world .

In short, the Biochar Fund fights hunger, deforestation, climate change and energy poverty - simultaneously and in a structural way.