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Biochar: “miracle material”

27th December 2008

Biochar - a simple porous charcoal anybody can make - both locks up carbon from the atmosphere, and enriches soils to boot

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It has been called a “miracle material” and a “climate saviour” – and it was invented 500 years ago in the Amazon when farmers took the burnt remains of their food and agricultural waste and buried it in the rain forest.

The burnt material – a porous charcoal called “biochar” – enriched and fertilized the soil, which to this day contains up to 70 times more carbon than non-enriched soils, according to scientists at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland, this month.

Now, scientists and policy-makers are urging that the post-Kyoto climate treaty – to be decided on in Copenhagen in 2009 – include stipulations that biochar use be widely adopted in order to lock up the carbon from the burnt plant waste and stimulate growth of more plants to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Its use could make existing agricultural lands more productive, and prevent further deforestation.

Published in The Green Report in The Globe and Mail

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• Tags:
• Biochar
• Climate Change
• History

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