By Robin Van Loon | Executive Director
It’s a good day for bio-char. In the world and in our world.
You may remember that bio-char is essentially charcoal used agriculturally – an amendment that improves soil structure and water retention organically while effectively sequestering carbon in biomass for hundreds or even thousands of years. It uses plants as the ultimate technology for removing an excess of carbon from the atmosphere, and it does so in a way that benefits small farmers, especially in the tropics where bio-char is particularly effective at conserving fragile soils.
Now for the good news. First, in the world. I’m thrilled to announce that our longtime ally and collaborator Francisco Román has received Peru’s top honors for an environmentalist. He won the award for his work studying remediation of areas deforested and polluted by illegal mining, the scourge of Madre de Dios, our region of the Amazon of Peru. While his research includes many treatments, one that he found most promising included the use of bio-char for mitigation of mercury contamination. Soon after, he presented these finding is Peru’s first national bio-char conference.
As a result, bio-char’s potential for impact is more visible than ever, in Peru and in the world. Given the prominent place of tropical forest conservation at COP21, many powerful strategies to counteract climate change are coming off the dry dock and setting sail.
And then the even better news– which has to do with you. In March 2016, our work was selected by GlobalGiving as part of the Project of the Month Club. Club members raised almost $9,000 toward our bio-char efforts – in one month! Big thanks to all the Project of the Month Club members out there. It’s hard to overstate what a huge impact you’ve had on what we’re able to accomplish.
For example? In coming months we’ll be able to construct Madre de Dios’s first ever Adam Retort, a manageable human scale technology for cleanly transforming plant biomass to bio-char. That means our bio-char production capability is about to skyrocket. The Retort arrives just in time for the development of a new tree nursery that will utilize bio-char and natural bio-fertilizers, a powerful combination for healthy trees. It also means that each seedling that goes out from the nursery will carry a payload of sequestered carbon. Soon tree nursery will become a vehicle for sharing bio-char and its benefits with farmers in our area.
Why is this relevant? Javier Huinga, one of my colleagues from Madre de Dios explains, "In our back corner of the Peruvian Amazon, many small farmers feel small, feel disempowered, feel voiceless in governance. It's also easy for small farmers to feel like they doesn't matter, that what they do doesn't have an impact on any greater whole. I'll pollute, I'll cut more forest and burn it and who cares? But that's not the reality. The reality is that what we do does matter. At least for my family, I'll eat healthy and natural food. Even if others don't care. And my forest, I'll keep it standing, keep it wild, as much of it as I can. I'll only take what I need. The more of us that think that way, the better for everyone."
It’s somewhat counter intuitive to imagine charcoal as a technology to combat climate change. We think slash-and-burn, we think smoke, we think emissions, and often that is in fact the case. But charcoal produced well, through pyrolysis and not combustion, with clean appropriate technology like the Adam Retort, truly does represent a game changer. It’s a form of what Eric Toensmeier calls carbon farming, which we only need more of if we are to survive as a species. Thank you for helping us do more of it.
By Robin Van Loon | Executive Director
By Robin Van Loon | Executive Director
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