In an important achievement for the biochar community, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)  -  a sister convention to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)  -  announced it will submit a proposal to get biochar officially recognized as a climate change mitigation and adaptation strategy. On December 11, the UNCCD organized a side-event on the topic at the COP-14 climate talks in Poznan, Poland.

The UNCCD published its biochar proposal and put other documents online introducing the concept. The International Biochar Initiative's response to this news is included below.

The Biochar Fund is pleased to note that the UNCCD proposal explicitly mentions the potential for an integrated synergy yielding multiple social, environmental and economic benefits when biochar is applied at the tropical forest frontier.

UNCCD Side Event on Biochar - Thursday December 11, 2008, Poznan, Poland

Biochar Can Act as an Insurer for Food and Cleaner Fuel Security While Simultaneously Aiding in the Effort to Reverse Global Warming

A group of panellists from the UNCCD, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, United Nations Development Programme-Drylands Development Centre, and United Nations Environment Programme will explain the capability of biochar to provide an optimal site for carbon sequestration, and at the same time increase land productivity so that the challenge of global warming and the world’s increasing need of food and cleaner fuels can be better met.

In light of the fact that the world’s soils hold more organic carbon than that held by the atmosphere as CO2 and vegetation combined, land as a major factor in carbon sequestration has remained under recognized. As the Earth is placed under more and more stress to produce food, fiber and energy, more and more carbon is removed from the ground and emitted into the atmosphere. A side effect of this ongoing global carbon cycle is the reduction of the soil’s fertility, impacting its long-term effectiveness.

Biochar, or charcoal, is one solution to slow down and even reverse the process. Taking biomass and converting it to biochar creates an unsurpassed location to sequester carbon with the added benefit of enhancing that soil’s fertility. Examples like the Chernozems of European Russia and the Terra Preta soils of Brazil are amongst the world’s most fertile.

Sustainable soil management can re-enrich with carbon large swathes of land that have been degraded as a result of inadequate farming practices and overproduction on the land. A huge potential to sequester carbon is available, particularly in drylands that are marginalized and uncultivated.

Biochar also can be implemented quickly on a small scale (e.g. cooking stoves). Large scale practices (e.g. biorefineries) also show great promise.

Submission by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification - 4th Session of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA 4), Poznan, 1-10 December 2008 - Submission containing ideas and proposals on Paragraph 1 of the Bali Action Plan: Use of biochar (charcoal) to replenish soil carbon pools, restore soil fertility and sequester CO2 .

UNCCD: Biochar in the context of reversing global warming and the UNCCD - Powerpoint Presentation, Poznan11 December 2008.

IBI Announces Success in Having Biochar Considered as a Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Tool

POZNAN, Poland, December 10, 2008 - The International Biochar Initiative (IBI) announces that the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has submitted a proposal to include biochar as a mitigation and adaptation technology to be considered in the post-2012-Copenhagen agenda of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

Biochar is a fine-grained, highly porous charcoal that helps soils retain nutrients and water. The carbon in biochar resists degradation and can sequester carbon in soils for hundreds to thousands of years.

IBI Executive Director Debbie Reed said, "The UNCCD submission is a great success, and is paralleled by a lot of very positive discussions and interest in biochar amongst country delegates as well as observers of the process."

The UNCCD, a sister convention to the UNFCCC, has identified biochar as a unique opportunity to address soils as a carbon sink. According to the submission document: "The world's soils hold more organic carbon than that held by the atmosphere as CO2 and vegetation, yet the role of the soil in capturing and storing carbon dioxide is often one missing information layer in taking into consideration the importance of the land in mitigating climate change."

UNCCD proposes that biochar must be considered as a vital tool for rehabilitation of dryland soils: "The fact that many of the drylands soils have been degraded means that they are currently far from saturated with carbon and their potential to sequester carbon may be very high ... making the consideration of Biochar, as a strategy for enhancing soils carbon sequestration, imperative."

UNCCD also cites the ability of biochar to address multiple climate and development concerns while avoiding the disadvantages of other bioenergy technologies that deplete soil organic matter (SOM). IBI Executive Director Debbie Reed said, "Pyrolysis systems that produce biochar can provide many advantages. Biochar restores soil organic carbon and soil fertility, reduces emissions from agriculture, and can provide clean, renewable energy. Conventional biomass energy competes with soil building needs for crop residue feedstocks, but biochar accommodates both uses."

Reduced deforestation is another biochar advantage cited by the UNCCD in their submitted proposal for including biochar in carbon trading mechanisms: "The carbon trade could provide an incentive to cease further deforestation; instead reforestation and recuperation of degraded land for fuel and food crops would gain magnitude."

Craig Sams, founder of Green & Black's Organic Chocolate, is in Poznan to help educate delegates about biochar. Sams believes that the climate and ancillary benefits of biochar are so great that biochar systems should be eligible for double credits. Sams said, "Adding the rewards for abandoning carbon emitting practices such as slash and burn cultivation, deforestation and wood fire cooking, to the rewards for adopting biochar practices in agriculture, forestry and cooking, ought to qualify for double credits."

UNCCD proposes to include biochar in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and to revise the rules to account for biochar as a permanent means of carbon capture. UNCCD also proposes adjusting the carbon offset rules to allow greater financial flows to help developing countries increase soil organic matter with biochar.

Biochar has one important additional advantage over other land use carbon sequestration projects - carbon sequestration through biochar is easy to quantify. It is also relatively permanent. The UNCCD says: "Potential drawbacks such as difficulty in estimating greenhouse gas removals and emissions resulting from land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF), or destruction of sinks through forest fire or disease do not apply to biochar soil amendments."

Overall, the potential magnitude of biochar as a climate mitigation tool is great. IBI Board Chair Dr. Johannes Lehmann said, "We are pleased that the UNCCD has recognized the potential of biochar. Results from IBI's preliminary model to estimate the potential of biochar carbon sequestration show that biochar production from agriculture and forestry residues can potentially sequester one gigaton of carbon in the world's soils annually by 2040. Using the biochar energy co-product to displace fossil fuel energy can approximately double the carbon impact of biochar alone." IBI's objective for the remainder of the UN meeting at Poznan is to interest more countries in proposing biochar for consideration as a mitigation and adaptation technology in the post-2012 Copenhagen process of the UNFCCC.

IBI Handout on Biochar at the COP-14 in Poznan, Poland .