Amongst scientists, James Hansen has long been one of the clearest voices for strong action against climate change. Yet now he advocates replacing coal with wood from vast tree plantations, burning the wood and capturing and sequestering the carbon dioxide. He also supports the idea that we should burn vast amounts of biomass in order to gain energy as well as charcoal in the hope that digging the charcoal into the soil will permanently sequester the carbon and make the soil more fertile, a concept known as 'biochar'.
It is deeply concerning that such ecologically short-sighted proposals come from a man who rightly warns that we are already 'beyond safe levels' of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. It is understandable that he and other scientists are looking at ways of reducing the fast increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations. Unfortunately, most of the proposals put forward for 'cooling the planet' involve either using vast amounts of energy for still unproven technologies (air capture of CO2) or, even more worryingly, sacrificing biodiversity and ecosystems.
Scientists who have developed the idea of using biomass power plants with carbon capture and storage, or biomass burning with biochar production in order to reduce atmospheric CO2 levels, have made it clear that at least 500 million hectares of plantations would be required, which is over one and a half times the size of India. Those would be primarily industrial plantations of fast-growing trees and grasses. Some suggest that 'biomass waste' could be used for this purpose, however natural systems produce no 'waste' and removing agricultural and forest residues from land causes major carbon dioxide emissions, loss of biodiversity as well as soil depletion and erosion.
The idea of biochar is based on ancient soils found in Central Amazonia, called 'terra preta'. Those are believed to have been created over very long periods by farming communities in pre-colonial times, who applied a mixture of charcoal, human waste and compost from diverse plants and animal remains to the soil. Terra preta soil is high in carbon and extremely fertile but there is no conclusive evidence that it can be reproduced on a short time-scale, using industrial, rather than locally adapted biodiverse farming methods. One of the lessons from the 'Green Revolution' is that any 'one size fits all' approach to agriculture has dangerous and unpredictable consequences.
Indigenous peoples and farming communities have, over thousands of years, developed crop and livestock varieties, soil conservation methods and sustainable farming methods which are adapted to local soil conditions, plant and animal species and climate. Biochar, on the other hand, is being developed by a small group of scientists together with bioenergy companies which are already patenting the process and which hope to sell biochar as a global response to climate change and to profit from carbon trading. Regardless of whether biochar may or may not make soil more fertile on a small-scale, covering hundreds of millions of hectares with 'energy crops' for this purpose would have devastating impacts on climate, soil, freshwater, biodiversity and people.
September's unprecedented plantation forest fires across South Africa provide a glimpse of a possible future where vast industrial tree plantations combine with global warming. Monoculture plantations dry up the land and are prone to fires and global warming fans the flames by exacerbating droughts and heatwaves. This appears to be yet another instance where large-scale bioenergy proposals are hastily being made that "reshape the Earth's landscape in a significant way" without reference to long-term unintended consequences.
Hansen's proposals would increase the scale of today's monocultures for biofuels at least 20-25 fold. Small farmers, indigenous peoples and forest communities, who are already suffering most from the impacts of climate change, would undoubtedly be the first to pay the price for 'carbon negative' bioenergy through the loss of their land and livelihoods. As we know from the experience with current biofuels, expanding monocultures is one of the quickest ways of making climate change worse.
Industrial monocultures (crops and trees) are the main cause of tropical deforestation and emit further vast amounts of greenhouse gases through agro-chemical use and soil erosion. By releasing large quantities of carbon from vegetation and soil and destroying biodiverse ecosystems, monoculture expansion ensures that key ecosystem functions such as the regulation of rainfall cycles, and the carbon and the nitrogen cycles, collapse. Already, there are 100 million hectares of industrial tree plantations, largely serving the pulp and paper industry, which have replaced natural ecosystems, including old growth forests as well as fertile farmland and pasture. They have decimated biodiversity, depleted groundwater, polluted large areas of land through agrichemical use, and eroded soil and destroyed the livelihoods of large numbers of people.
Clearly, we cannot grow enough biomass to replace more than a small fraction of the fossil fuels burnt at present, and further expansion of tree and crop monocultures will ensure there will be no stable climate and no habitable planet. Rural communities in many parts of the world have found ways of growing, harvesting and using biomass sustainably to meet their own energy needs, but if we try to replace a significant proportion of fossil fuel use with biomass we risk greatly accelerating climate change and triggering ecosystem collapse. Large-scale bioenergy plantations are therefore not an alternative to coal burning and will not remove excess atmospheric CO2.
What we need is massive demand reduction by the wealthy together with truly sustainable wind and solar and other types of renewable energy. Throughout the planet's history, biodiverse ecosystems have stabilised the planet's climate. Rather than sacrificing them for bioenergy, truly effective protection and regeneration of ecosystems, based on diversity and resilience, offers our only hope of survival.
I support the expansion of bioenergy solutions to the hydra-headed problems of energy, the environment, global warming, and environmental justice. Not as the only macro solution but as a set of micro solutions that can be customized according to unique criteria indigenous to each region, climate, and culture.
Isn't it patronizing to say that bioenergy solutions "adversely impact small farmers, indigenous peoples and forest communities with loss of their land and livelihoods"? There are 10 million timberland owners in the U.S. They do a better job managing forests than the federal government. They will sell out to developers if we don't let them make a profit on their legacies. Is that what we want?
It is, to some extent, the "largesse" of dumping Western produced foods and grains on poor regions that disenfranchise indigenous cultures from profiting from their own agricultural development. We should help them grow their own economy rather than think that they should remain dependent on foreign imports of food, fiber, and energy. Their dependence on oil is the biggest threat to their development.
Indigenous peoples desire to have more control of the use and yield of their acreage. Windmills and solar cells are not universally deployable, do not address baseload demand, and are reliant on transmission line availability.
It would be disastrous to deploy a monocultural solution of windmills in a non-windy region or a set of solar panels in a cloud covered climate zone. One of the major problems of the fossil status quo is that energy generation is overly centralized and feedstock supply remote to the region being supplied with energy. We need to return to a more decentralized, self-reliant energy paradigm - bioenergy provides the most customizable range of solutions.
We need to get away from the thinking that any energy solutions that are rural or that involve direct intervention with the biogenic carbon cycle is a threat to nature. Clearly Pandora is already out of the box. Greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels is a 150 year mostly urban diversion from the use of fiber and feed as the primary sources of energy for the advancement of civilization. Photosynthesis predates and is more natural than photovoltaics. And bioenergy is more universally scaleable than PV or wind.
Why can't we leave nature alone in the Western Hemisphere to return to its pre-Columbian profile? Because the conditions have changed dramatically and will continue to aggravate the problems. Population growth is one assurance of that. Dryer global warming conditions - which are exacerbated by massive GHG eruptions from wildfires and biomass decay, and the lack of remedial reforestation - are certain to worsen.
Regarding forests, the U.S. Forest Service has been on a hiatus from forest management projects on federal lands for several decades now as a result of the relentless litigious onslaught from NGOs that "protecting" our forests and timberland habitats means no forest management. The result? Six of the seven worst fire seasons in the last 50 (measured in acres but ignoring the vastly more destructive nature of these fires) have occurred in the last 8 years. Habitats aren't logged out - they are burned out. Forest restoration is at a virtual standstill because a growing proportion of FS funds are now used to fight forest fires. Forest tree density has led to ever worsening vulnerability to both wildfires and bug infestations. Thinning, salvaging of decaying biomass, and reforestation - aka, forest management - could mitigate the problems significantly.
We need to intervene not only for wildfires but also for hurricane debris (Katrina contributed 38 times more forest knockdown acreage than Mt. St. Helens), ocean garbage patches, bug infestations, floods, invasive species, urban landfills, and accumulating ag and forestry waste.
Clean biomass conversion technologies provide us with a whole host of local solutions for these environmental disasters. They harvest the solar energy stored in biomass before it has fossilized. They provide a means for using biogenic carbon in place fossil carbon to produce biopower, biofuel, and biodegradable bioproduct alternatives.
In my opinion, nothing insures a perpetuation of the fossil status quo than championing an anti-bioenergy agenda.
The concern about the expansion of burning wood to replace fossil fuels stems from the vast acreages that will need to be devoted to biomass plantations. Yes, it can provide part of the solution, but we need to face up to the reality that it will be only a small part of the solution.
Better to know now, than find out to our cost later.
The major part of the solution is a rather rapid and substantial descaling of our use of energy. (That is: Efficiency of Use + Using Much Less). This is not an easy message to sell. But I believe it's the only one that hits the sustainability spot.
Dr. Hansen:
Thanks for all your great work.
I am sending this critique of your proposal in the hopes that you can point me to a rebuttal or response you may have written and that the conversation regarding this subject will improve our approaches to and advocacy regarding climate change. I would also greatly appreciate reading anything you've published on the industrial logging of primary forests. If you have not written anything about this subject yet, would you let me know whether you will be addressing it soon?
I am a member of environmental organizations which are working to end industrial logging in such forests as one necessary step towards addressing climate change and loss of biodiversity.
Best,
Robert Jereski
New York Climate Action Group
Where there is a natureal abundance of forest biomass, and where its intellegent removal doesn't harm the ecosystem, there is good opportunity to replace a portion of the fossil fuels with wood-based biomass. A case in point: Michigan, in the north of the U.S. is considering constructing a coal fired power plant, where there is a huge abundance of natural and undermanaged forests. This is the same region where there is serious unemployment from the down turn in the economy.
By wisely managing our natural forests, improving their over all condition and thus increasing the value of future harvests and giving current landowners room to pause before subdividing larger tracts, and providing employment to the local populations by utilizing this open-carbon-cycle fuel (rather than a heretofore permanently stored carbon-based fossil fuel), only makes sense.
The rotting wood lying around in a forest is there for a purpose,to replenish the soil and as a home for insects, bugs, rodents, etc. In England there have been complaints about not allowing individuals to traditionally collect as much firewood as they like (supposedly for their own use, but unenforceable). This might be OK for limited personal use but most of these individuals who complain would be selling firewood cheaper than the corresponding amount of coal. I am not an expert in forestation but know greed when I see it.
There is an assumption here that the reafforestation will be monocultural. This is not the case. Afforestation and reafforestation can be done in a way that is ecologically and socially productive, using indigenous trees and providing work and wealth to local communities. http://www.greenhealth.org.uk/DesertRose.htm
The article makes some good points. Working with Dr Bruno Glaser of the Uni of Bayruth PWR has founded Biochar Europe to promote the use of biochar systems both in Europe and Africa. One of the results of generating biocahr is the reduction in GHG emissions caused when wood etc rots in-atmophere. Instead, the pyrolysis process that generates the biochar also generates syngas which is then burnt to produce energy/heat. The resulting biochar can then be used as a fertiliser in either forestry or arable farming. Biochar is a win-win situation.
Normally Jim Hansen is at the cutting edge and should be compulsory listening. In his focus on biochar I fear he has missed the unintended consequences that researchers like Almuth Ernsting are collating and publicising that make this like other recent 'climate solutions' into the exact opposite.
Biochar, to solve the challenges of carbon overshoot outlined by Jim Hansen, are inevitably at industrial scale. For biochar to extract carbon in the time frame needed in must use fast growing trees. They will not be planting rainforest and 'managing' it. They need industrial plant near a big source of biomass or the transport costs become prohibitive. The article well describes the dangers of monocultures. They are vulnerable to mega fires, necessitate the use of agrochemicals (fertilisers emit NO2 296 times more powerful than CO2), often involve land-grabs from indigenous people,
As we know from recent agrofuel research Fargione et al, Holly Gibbs et al agrofuels are almost never carbon negative and in cases where grown on cleared land can create up front a carbon debt of 1500 years - this in a time when we need to be taking carbon out of the air. Industrial monocultures almost always degrade the land so it is not fit for growing anything in a few short decades and with tropical soils a few short years.
These big geo-engineering projects are sponsored and run by some pretty ruthless biotech and agrofuel companies, who are already causing appalling human rights abuses and land grabs all over the world.
But all this aside it is the threat to eco-systems which is likely to make these big intervention a short cut to the edge of the climate change cliff. UN reports speak of the potential collapse of rainforests in Borneo by 2012 driven by deforestation. If that happens we are passed a fatal tipping point. The Amazon decline sped up by 69% this year. We are already on the scree slope towards the cliff.
I have just begun reading the new report produced by Biofuelwatch (one of the most proactive and trusted groups analysing data around the exponentially growing agrofuel industry) CLIMATE GEO-ENGINEERING WITH 'CARBON NEGATIVE' BIOENERGY.
The inverted commas signify that when looked at closely there is almost no truly carbon negative bioenergy and certainly not at the scale that will enable us to replace more than a very tiny proportion of fossil energy with bio-energy. I would urge you to read at least the 3 page executive summary but preferably the whole 80 page report. http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/docs/cnbe/cnbe.html for downloads.
There may be possibilities in the future using algae to produce some low carbon liquid fuel.
A much better place to store carbon than in trees or even charcoal returned to the soil is in organic matter in the soil. Current monoculture and industrial farming methods lose soil carbon. 13m tonnes lost in the UK in the last 10 years roughly equal to what has been saved by increased efficiency. I have recently come across the Soil Carbon Coalition. I have not had time to examine their claims but I have read of research that says a 1.6% increase in soil carbon over the worlds farmed land would remove all anthropogenic carbon from the atmosphere. Now that's what we want. A farm cited on the soil carbon coaltion website increase the carbon load in its soils by more than 4% in 5 years. Now that's the scale we need. And it would guarantee better soils, food productivity and security, better water retention, more soil biodiversity, less inputs of energy, fertilisers, money, happy farmers... Now that's how we could get it. But it's not going to make any great corporation or investor rich... So the catastrophic stuff may happen first.
Reply to Bioenergy Blog Ring
The Bioenergy Blog Ring opines that solar collection (cells only?) is not a significantly deployable energy source for non-centralized locales. Bioenergy is their ‘real’ solution to energy availability, global warming, and environmental justice.
Claims of benefits from their bioenergy schemes and its ‘solar’ superiority, however, are just talk until they substantiate them with comprehensive entropy calculations.
Bioenergy’s admitted intervention in the earth’s regenerative cycles and their summary discounting of solar suggest that in their enthusiasm they have neglected the entropy law entirely.
See my article ‘Entorpy (not Energy) is the Issue’, New Earth Rising (# 1).
Wendell G Bradley 12/02/2008
Reply to Wendell G Bradley
Let me clarify - I am not against any sustainable renewable energy. Solar and wind are sustainable in some locations but largely not sustainable in most. Biomass (including MSW) is available in all forms throughout both rural and urban areas. As Thomas Friedman writes, we need to deploy a broad range of technologies that will be affordable globally at the "Chin-dia" price.
I responded to this article because it largely attacks the use of wood for biopower outright as unsustainable - and I think that it can be a sustainable solution where scaled appropriately in regions where other options are not available. I compare leaves to solar cells because it strikes me as ironic that many proponents for solar cells advocate their technology as being more sustainable than nature's way of converting and storing solar energy. Both have their places and economies of scale.
It is my privilege to work with ACORE which supports all forms of Renewable Energy. I just returned from their Phase II Forum which took place in the U.S. House of Representatives Cannon Caucus Room on Capitol Hill (see http://www.acorephaseii.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=56 ). I highly recommend watching the inspirational and concrete recommendations for renewable energy that are being delivered to Obama's transition team by the likes of Sen. Daschle, Jim Woolsey, Gen. Wesley Clark, Thomas Friedman, Dan Reicher, Gov. Chet Culver, Jeff Broin, Dan Arvizu, and Aimee Christensen. Get to know these names - they will be major influencers in the renewable energy paradigm shift for the incoming administration.
Reply to Bioenergy Blog Ring
The issue I raised (my above reply) was ecological justification (new school).
Your reply (?) is political (old school).
Show me the homework!
Wendell G Bradley (12/08/2008)
The difference between old school and new school is generally one of experience through deployments.
There are millions of deployed rural micro-economies in the U.S. that are tied to "old school" - for instance, there are 10 million private timberland owners. Particularly in view of the credit crisis, does it make more sense to scrap or revitalize them?
There is nothing "old school" about biomass conversion technologies that are in the pipeline. They are clean-tech in that they can clean up waste biomass that, through decay, contribute greatly to ghg.
How about gradually evolving old school through application of new technologies, regulatory thresholds, and price points?
Regarding your Entropy article statement - "Ethanol production emits two to nine times the greenhouse gas emissions ‘saved’ by substituting it for gasoline" - please supply a source.
Even The Nature Conservancy observes that the lifecycle generation of ghg from biofuels is dependent on feedstock and process used. According to them, even corn ethanol is no worse than oil-based fuels. Forest biomass fuels are rated at >95% cleaner than oil - and they don't consume anywhere near as much water, fertilizer, or pesticides to produce.
My blogs, conference notes, presentations, and recordings are my homework - open to public scrutiny (as you have done). Do you have a blog?
I'll be at RETECH 2009 and would like to meet you.
Below is an email sent by Pushker Khareshka, co-author of "Target CO2" by James Hansen et al. This is a response to a query by Robert Jereski, a Co-founder of the New York Climate Action Group, about Dr James Hansen's response this article (http://www.newearthrising.org/2008/11/proposal-to-replace-coal-with-wood-is-ecologically-misguided.asp), with specific reference to biochr in the article "Target CO2".
27th February 2009
"Robert (and Jim),
I briefly replied to Jim about some of these issues in late December, and have incorporated the crux of that reply here, along with some further remarks. I have some general comments followed by specific responses to some of the issues at hand.
First off, much of the hype surrounding our land use-related mitigation assumptions in the Target CO2 paper simply boils down to misconceptions and/or exaggerated claims about our analysis. On a fundamental philosophical/methodological note, our mitigation scenario assumptions are not meant to be taken literally -- it irks me that some people have latched onto them as if they were gospel (i.e. the biochar enthusiasts). Maybe we should have
explained more clearly in the paper that our scenarios are illustrative in nature, i.e. they are simply meant to illustrate (1) the *magnitude* of needed mitigation actions and (2) the *types* of mitigation actions that will be needed to bring CO2 back down to 350 ppm or lower in the relevant time frame.
Thus, our 'recommendations' should be viewed more in a general sense -- they depend heavily on assumptions based on relevant assessments in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, which we necessarily had to rely on, given that none of us are experts on land use practices. The numbers that we used were taken directly from analyses in highly cited papers in well-respected journals, IPCC reports, etc. So, if people have serious qualms with the basis of our land use-related numbers, they should really take them up with the authors of the papers that we cited -- e.g. the references in the segments of our paper that you've quoted (notably, David Tilman as well as the authors of the IPCC land use
report [SRLULUCF]).
In any case, I (and I'm sure Jim too) certainly share environmentalists' concerns about the ultimate effectiveness of reforestation, soil carbon management, or other land use changes. I fully acknowledge that the scientific study of land use practices is still an evolving field and therefore has many uncertainties, so if future peer-reviewed published analyses suggest that the land use scenarios we've assumed in Target CO2 warrant significant revision, we'd be glad to revise our thinking on that. My main regret in the meantime is not qualifying our assumptions about biochar in particular, i.e. not making it more clear that there are still fundamental uncertainties related to its usefulness for carbon sequestration.
A few brief comments re our specific mitigation assumptions....
1. The now very clear realization that current-generation biofuel production (food crop-based) is both environmentally and socioeconomically harmful is not in any way contradicted by anything we say in Target. Our awareness of the problems with current biofuels is precisely why we cited the Searchinger et al. and Fargione et al. papers, both of which provide major critiques of current biofuels approaches.
2. There are numerous assessments in the scientific literature of available land for reforestation which reveal that there is indeed abundant suitable land, including hundreds of Mha of sparsely populated marginal lands -- e.g. see
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T3Y-4S02T58-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=2a7a35ce5af3e5600dd5e262117daa92
That said, effective reforestation will of course have to be highly customized to a specific area's climate etc. -- perhaps we could have stated this more clearly as well, i.e. made it clear that there is no universal blueprint for reforestation, nor guarantee of success. (But again, the key point is that fossil fuel-related mitigation efforts alone won't be enough -- we
clearly need to restore degraded biospheric carbon uptake capacity somehow. Since reforestation is known to occur on a large scale even in nature, it makes perfect sense to promote sensibly done anthropogenic reforestation to hasten the process of natural succession wherever it's feasible.)
3. The amount of land and irrigated water that would be needed to achieve the levels of degraded reforestation that we assume are not explicitly specified in our paper, in part because they aren't clearly specified in the relevant papers that we relied on -- e.g. the methods description of the Tilman et al. 2006 biofuels paper only states that their low-input/high-diversity native perennial grasses grown on degraded lands were irrigated during initial establishment only (they didn't quantify the specific amount of water they used). On a related note, the value of 0.8 --> 23 EJ was also taken directly from that paper. And again, that is just one example of a large-scale mitigation practice, in this case one that could help reduce emissions from liquid fossil fuels -- but while significant, reducing those emissions is ultimately less important than the key requirement of near-term coal phaseout.
4. The notion of Biofuelswatch that the level of reforestation that we've called for would require more than a 2.5-fold increase in the productivity of the entire land biosphere seems a bit farfetched. (First of all, I assume that by 'productivity', they mean NEP, not NPP, otherwise 2.5xNPP would be about 150 Pg C/yr!) The net land-atmosphere flux is very uncertain, but Table 7.1 of the IPCC-AR4 (WG1, Ch. 7) gives a *net* land uptake value of 0.9 Pg C/yr for years 2000-2005. So 2.5 times this would be ~2.3 Pg C/yr. However we very clearly state that we assume reforestation-induced C uptake of 1.6 Pg C/yr -- which was taken straight from the IPCC SRLULUCF report. Granted, this still might be very optimistic (it was the upper end of the range in the IPCC report), but it's obviously tiny compared to global land NPP, it's not even 2.5xNEP, and it's not outlandish, assuming that much of it would simply come from restoration of previous uptake capacity, etc.
Lastly, as for the hyped claims of the biochar enthusiasts, clearly we aren't responsible for their (over)excitement about what we included in our paper about biochar -- it's crystal clear that we relegate biochar's contribution to only a very small portion of the land use wedge (and that reforestation + halting deforestation is an order-of-magnitude more important).
Regards,
Pushker
Pushker Kharecha, PhD
Climate Scientist, NASA GISS / Columbia Univ. Earth Institute
....
27th February 2009
Let me add another clarification to the ones below. Although I do think, as mentioned below, that our fairly tepid assumptions about biochar have been a bit overblown by the biochar enthusiasts, that certainly does not mean that I think there's no potential worth in
biochar as one of numerous mitigation options. It may in fact turn out to be very useful, but my main concern at the moment is that all the promotion it's getting seems premature -- e.g. even Johannes Lehmann (whom we have a friendly rapport with, and whom
we've invited to speak at GISS in early May) has ackowledged in his published papers and elsewhere that, despite his optimism for char, there are still fundamental uncertainties that need to be resolved before it can be regarded as a demonstrably viable, large-scale (international) mitigation option.
Pushker
http://fse.stanford.edu/news/biofuels_boom_could_fuel_rainforest_destruction_reports_fse_researcher_holly_gibbs_20090218/
RELEASE: Global Civil Society Opposes Charred Earth Policy
PRESS/SOCIAL MEDIA RELEASE
Global Civil Society Opposes Charred Earth Policy
- 147 organisations from 44 countries warn against 'biochar' (large-scale charcoal) as a dangerous new false solution to climate change
TAKE ACTION:
Tell Leading Climate Scientists, Industrialists and Negotiators to Stop Promoting Industrial Scale Biochar
http://www.climateark.org/shared/alerts/send.aspx?id=industrial_biochar
April 6, 2009
By Earth's Newsdesk, a project of Ecological Internet
http://www.ecoearth.info/newsdesk/
CONTACT: Dr. Glen Barry, glenbarry@ecologicalinternet.org
(Earth) -- An international declaration was today launched by 147 organisations, including Ecological Internet, opposing the growing hype and political support for Biochar. The groups signing the declaration "strongly oppose the inclusion of soils in carbon trade and offset mechanisms, including in the Clean Development Mechanism.” The groups further assert that "the 'biochar' initiative fails to address the root causes of climate change.” [1]
Those issuing this warning range from small farmers associations and forest protection groups to international environmental networks and human rights advocates. Further organizations are being invited to sign the declaration. Ecological Internet has independently organized a protest alert questioning whether enough "waste biomass" and "degraded and marginal" lands exist to carry out geoengineering of the Earth's land and climate at the scale proposed, and without intensifying industrial tree plantations and all their attendant problems. [2]
This International declaration "Biochar, a New Big Threat to People, Land and Ecosystems" has been launched as UN and government delegates are meeting in Bonn this week to discuss a post-2012 climate change agreement. One of the proposals [3] which they will be discussing is to allow carbon credits for using charcoal as a soil additive in the hope that this will create a permanent 'carbon sink' and help to reduce global warming, and reclaim degraded soil. They will also discuss whether to generally include agricultural soils into carbon trading.
Civil society groups have called for caution on Biochar in view of serious scientific uncertainty. Many share concerns that this technology would lead to vast areas of land being converted to new plantations, thus repeating the unfolding disasters which agrofuels cause. They point out that large scale financial incentives for biochar or other soil sequestration could result in large scale land conversion and displacement of people.
Helena Paul from EcoNexus states: "Including biochar and agricultural soil in carbon markets would turn soils into a commodity that could be sold to offset pollution elsewhere. It would endanger smallholder farmers and indigenous peoples who cannot compete with governments and large companies and who are at risk of being displaced if the ground is literally sold out from under their feet."
Stella Semino from Grupo de Reflexion Rural, Argentina adds: "The idea that charcoal will rescue a burning planet is absurd. Some biochar proponents call for quantities of charcoal which would require over 500 million hectares of industrial tree and crop plantations. We know already that industrial agriculture and tree plantations are a major contributor to climate change and displace people and biodiversity. We need to protect ecosystems, not grow vast new monocultures and burn them! This is a farce.”
Almuth Ernsting from Biofuelwatch states: "Large-scale support for biochar is premature and dangerous. Claims that biochar is retained permanently in soils and increases fertility are based on Terra Preta soils in Amazonia, which were made by indigenous peoples hundreds or even thousands of years ago. Those farmers used biodiverse organic residues and compost, as well as charcoal. Modern biochar is not the same. Some companies are making biochar out of municipal waste and tyres, others promote using biochar to scrub flue gases from coal burners and then using this combination as a fertilizer. Some plan to use giant microwave ovens to char trees – justifying this by pointing to ancient Amazonian soils is absurd." [4]
CONTACTS:
Rachel Smolker (U.S.): rsmolker@riseup.net
- Tel +1 – 802-482-2848 or +1-802-735-7794
Almuth Ernsting (UK): info@biofuelwatch.org.uk
- Tel 0044-1224-324797
Helena Paul (UK): h.paul@econexus.ino
- Tel +44–(0)207–431-4357
Stella Semino (Denmark): stella.semino@mail.dk
- Tel +45–(0)463-25328
NOTES:
[1] The declaration and organizations can be found at http://www.regenwald.org/international/englisch/news.php?id=1226
Further Organizations wishing to add their name to the declaration should contact: biochar_concerns@yahoo.co.uk
[2] TAKE ACTION: Tell Leading Climate Scientists, Industrialists and Negotiators to Stop Promoting Industrial Scale Biochar http://www.climateark.org/shared/alerts/send.aspx?id=industrial_biochar
[3] The governments of Belize, Gambia, Ghana, Lesotho, Micronesia, Mozambique, Niger, Senegal, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, have called for the inclusion of biochar into the Clean Development Mechanism, i.e. into carbon trading. This is also supported by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification.
[4] For further information and references regarding biochar, see “Biochar for Climate Change Mitigation: Fact or Fiction?” http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/docs/biocharbriefing.pdf
DISCUSS RELEASE:
http://www.climateark.org/blog/2009/04/release-global-civil-society-o.asp
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