[Terrapreta] Question

[Biopact]

Lou, just a very quick interjection: a top-down approach may indeed be necessary, even in Africa, but biochar can precisely play a great role in offsetting the potentially disastrous social side-effects of such top-down approaches. Top-down and bottom-up schemes might become complementary. Again, we could be looking at a perfect conceptual match.
Lorenzo




  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: lou gold 
  To: Biopact 
  Cc: terrapreta at bioenergylists.org 
  Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2008 6:19 PM
  Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Question


  Very good thinking here Lorenzo. I think the Amazon has its differences but conceptually you are on target. I have been thinking that REDD and biochar and biofuel and fertilizer all need to be connected. thanks for helping me flesh it out.

  One of the problems in Brazil is that the commodity boom is producing lots of land speculation and both the big and little guys often "skirt" the laws. The remedy may possibly necessitate a top-down approach in order to establish the needed institutional reach into the frontier. The situation is very complicated.


  On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 12:41 PM, Biopact <biopact at biopact.com> wrote:

    Hi Lou, I'm working on the Congo Basin forest, where the situation is rather different (deforestation & degratation primarily caused by shifting cultivation). But I think there could be many similarities between our respective approaches. Let me briefly outline one of the main benefits of biochar in this context, as I see it. Biochar must be seen in its relation to proposed mechanisms to protect forests as carbon stocks ("avoided deforestation", AD / "Reducing Emissions from Deforestation & Forest Degradation", REDD / etc...). 

    Many of these proposals are on the table, each with their pros and cons. They can be seen as "competitors" to the biochar concept, even though they are receiving much more attention by the international community. Instead of competitors, though, they can just as well become synergistically linked and reinforce each other.

    One recurring problem with AD, REDD and other schemes is that they are all "top down" approaches (the state receives funds from the international community or from the carbon markets to protect the C-stock in forests; funds which are supposed to "trickle down" as social and economic benefits to populations at the forest margins). This top-down approach represents many social risks; you can't just chase away millions of people out of their forest habitat. Without genuine local economic development amongst these people, and if the funds don't reach them, deforestation will go on elsewhere (the "displacement effect" or "leakage") or the scheme will simply be resisted on the ground.

    Biochar on the contrary is a bottom-up strategy - the carbon management is done by the very populations who live at the forest frontier, and they immediately receive tangible benefits (improved agricultural yields) and the carbon credits (at least, that's the scenario).

    So to me, the most important thing is to search for synergies between AD/REDD and similar mechnisms on the one hand, and biochar on the other hand. 

    REDD may help save forests, but to implement it successfully, local economic development amongst the populations must be guaranteed, and this can be done via biochar projects. Both approaches reinforce each other. As REDD formally protects a given area of forest, biochar does so indirectly, by limiting agricultural expansion by communities living at the forest frontier.  

    REDD and biochar can in fact become a perfect match. 

    Now with regards to your question about cattle ranching, here's a potential scenario (I must stress: the situation in Central Africa is quite different, so I'm not an expert on land-use change dynamics at the forest frontier in Brazil). Pasture expansion into the Amazon is often the second step of a long series of steps that drives deforestation: first illegal loggers move in, then the cattle ranchers clear the remainder of the forest and prepare the way for soybean farmers later on. So to calculate the opportunity cost of a patch of intact forest, you have to value its timber, its low-cost land that can be used for grazing by cattle (cattle are big money), and its function as a soybean field (soybean prices have risen seriously). 

    Now let's break things up: REDD can compensate for the lost opportunity to harvest timber; biochar can compensate for the lost opportunity for cattle to graze. What you're left compensating is the soybean field: now biochar's ability to make poor soils more fertile should partly compensate this lost opportunity.

    So, suppose the Brazilian government supports both REDD and biochar, and the international carbon authorities (Kyoto) recognize biochar as a mechanism to sequester carbon; then you can potentially halt deforestation. You get big funds for standing pristine forest (the frontier), while you get big funds from sequestering C via char at the frontier, by drawing on secondary forest or degraded forest which is converted into biochar (later on field residues keep adding biochar and keep bringing in money). So the frontier gets protected by a strong "buffer zone": a standing forest worth a lot for its carbon (recognized via REDD), with "in front" of it a biochar zone where productive agriculture can be undertaken, limiting the pressure on the protected forest.

    The synergy between these two concepts and the rather big amounts of money they can bring in, might be capable of halting the three factors mentioned above (logging, cattle, soy).

    Not sure if this makes sense. But I'm very interested in getting to know your take on this.

    I'm writing an overview of this concept of the "biochar buffer zone" as it relates to the Congo Basin forest. There it makes for a wonderful and very workable synergy with REDD, mainly because there's much less pressure from cattle ranching and because industrialised agriculture is far less developed there. Now is the chance to join biochar + REDD as a way to prevent the Brazilian deforestation scenario which we've seen the past 30 years, from playing out in Central Africa.

    Best, Lorenzo 



      ----- Original Message ----- 
      From: lou gold 
      To: terrapreta at bioenergylists.org 
      Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2008 8:29 AM
      Subject: [Terrapreta] Question


      Hi All,

      I need some help working through a puzzle.

      As you know, my highest priority is saving the forest, especially the Amazon forest. I have been investing a lot of hopes in the possibility that terra preta might somehow show the way. But I have not been able to figure out the benefit of soil improvement (etc, etc) for cattle ranching and it is the expansion of cattle combined with logging that is the front line of deforestation.

      I know that switching from slash-and-burn to slash-and-char will be helpful. But cattle are going to expand as the world gains more and more people who want to eat meat. Please, let's not go into the protein efficiencies or ethics of this trend. I'm trying to deal with the world as it is.  Can anyone see a way that terra preta might be helpful here?

      Thanks.

      lou

      -- 
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