Shifting chars? Aligning climate change, carbon abatement agriculture, land use and food safety and security policies

摘要

In September 2008, I attended the 2nd International Biochar Initiative Conference in Newcastle, UK. The presentations were upbeat and the assorted delegates (about 200) from research and development, companies, investment firms and governments (predominantly from industrialized countries) were reasonably confident that biochar would have a major role to play in tackling carbon reduction policies in the following decade. One European politician told the audience that biochar was 'too important' to leave to soil scientists alone. Most of us went home confident that biochar had a promising future - not only could it store carbon in the long term (climate change relevant), it would have benefits for many soil types and improve crop productivity. Biochar also reflected the shift from exclusive focus upon 'carbon emission reduction' to thinking more in terms of 'carbon abatement' whereby carbon removal from the atmosphere and its long-term secure storage would be equally valued as avoiding emissions from fossil fuels in the first place. This approach was pioneered by the late Peter Read but had become enmeshed in controversy on the reversibility of carbon removal in forests and soils - an issue which biochar appeared to effectively address through the recalcitrance of a high percentage of biochar carbon . Biochar therefore seemed an ideal candidate technology and practice for support under the CDM of the Kyoto Protocol. Bioenergy technology development would be incentivized, it was then assumed, by the 'reality' of depleting gas and oil supplies, hence rising fuel prices; the rise of'unconventional fossil fuel' supplies (shale gas, tar sands, etc.) that was even then underway in North America, together with concerns over biomass sustainability, has since undermined the case for (hence investment in) bioenergy.