Climate change mitigation and adaptation are major topics in related international negotiations to save the human enterprise from barreling full speed through a still unknown tipping point into irreversible global heating. Last October, BioScience offered a special section on biological carbon sequestration with a range of arboricultural and agricultural options. One option that was mentioned but not analyzed in depth is biochar, which is charred organic matter that could be used for agricultural soil enhancement or bioremediation. BioScience contributor Rattan Lal (2010) considers biochar a viable but not major component of mitigation through the sequestration of carbon in soil (the major terrestrial sink), partially because the science of biochar is still in its infancy. Not cited in his article were Lehmann and Joseph's (2009) book on the state of the science and Bruges's (2009) more popular volume.
A month after BioScience's special section, The Biochar Solution: Carbon Farming and Climate Change was published. This book is an overview, intended for a more general audience, with an impressive summary of much of the pertinent science and a careful inclusion of biochar in the call for greater adaptation and sustainability in farming practices. Although he always considers mitigation, author Albert K. Bates is more concerned with adaptations that will contribute to both mitigation and improved food security (something Lal is also concerned about) within a more organic, biodynamic, and permanent agricultural landscape.
The Biochar Solution is divided into five sections, after a foreword by Vandana Shiva, longtime critic of the current global political economic system that is the root cause of climate change. She cautions us to avoid a fixation on biochar-only solutions and to embrace ethically and ecologically sound changes in agriculture in order to contribute to a more just and sustainable global society. Bates gives consideration to her warning by maintaining objectivity as he outlines the origins of the current scientific interest in biochar, examines some of modern agriculture's failings, surveys options and especially technologies for capturing carbon with biochar, examines more sustainable traditional agricultural systems and how these are being used to heal degraded agroecosystems, and finally discusses the politics surrounding biochar and the creation of carbon-neutral and carbon-negative communities.
The first section (Losing the Recipe) is a broad mix of quick reviews of agricultural origins and includes a discussion of the major twentieth-century figure of Amazonian dark earth (ADE) research, Dutchman Wim Sombroek, who organized the now-international effort to study ADE. This section also covers the first Europeans' experiences in Amazonia, during which they were impressed by the healthy, well-fed native populations in a region now known for its poor soils. Bates is a great fan of Gaspar de Carvajal, the first European chronicler of the Amazon River, but does not use enough caution when retelling his tales—something I've learned over the last two decades but failed to pass on to Bates when he interviewed me a few years ago.
Nonetheless, modern archaeological work is confirming that there is enough ADE to have supported very large populations along the major whitewater rivers, such as the Madeira and the Amazon, and that these ADE sites were quickly reforested when the indigenous peoples were decimated by disease, slavery, and European-inspired warfare, leaving the “empty” forests that so impressed the first European naturalists. When modern populations (including Confederate Southerners) started new settlements, they soon learned to seek out the ADE, because it permitted abundant harvests of sugarcane and other export crops. Bates then shows us the first modern scientific analyses of ADE at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, which were forgotten until Sombroek organized the ADE research effort in the 1990s.
The second section (Agriculture and Climate) identifies some of the technologies that led to soil degradation and fueled the collapse of numerous early civilizations, starting with the earliest hearth of food production systems in the Near East. One of the author's strengths is his grasp of technologies and how they can contribute to the degradation or conservation of soils. His review of the development of plows is excellent. Needless to say, the plow is not responsible for the degradation of millions of hectares of once-fertile soil or for the desertification of once-habitable regions. Rather, human use and misuse of technology and, more recently, the idea that soils can be considered factories needing only inorganic inputs (e.g., fertilizers, pesticides) instead of being recognized as living systems is driving degradation worldwide. In turn, degradation is driving further land-use change to supply food and fiber to populations that have no awareness of the unsustainability of the current human enterprise.
The fact that land-use change drives global climate change, which was also later proven by modern research, was illustrated by the effect of the decimation of Native Americans by European conquest. The resulting reforestation sequestered so much carbon so quickly that it caused the Little Ice Age, which affected Europe and North America (Nevle and Bird 2008). Bates uses this new research to suggest—I think correctly—that Native American agricultural practices, including ADE creation, contributed to ecosystem resilience in such a way as to favor this rapid reforestation— something that is extremely unlikely to recur after the soil degradation caused by modern industrial agriculture.
In the third section (Capturing Carbon), Bates reviews appropriate soil science and different ideas for carbon farming; he discusses how ruminants play a part, even though they are often demonized by climate mitigation activists; he then focuses on technologies, his specialty. Bates explains composting, how compost “tea” activates biochar (which may be the secret for using biochar to create dark earths), and how to make biochar. Numerous inventors are developing multipurpose stoves that make biochar, which would allow a family to cook a meal, a farmer to generate energy, or an industry to produce chemical byproducts while also generating energy. Although the stoves designed for poor rural farmers in the developing world perfectly satisfy Vandana Shiva's aspirations, those intended for industry fuel her worries about capitalist enterprises using this technology in the carbon market. Nevertheless, a full range of farming technologies is available, and as with the plow, our future depends on its use and misuse.
The fourth section (Gardening the Earth) delves into alternatives to modern industrial agriculture. Bates examines Mayan milpas and Aztecan chinampas, both of which have served as models for small-scale alternative agrotechnologies. He examines trees, different arboriculture practices, and strategies for greening deserts, including the Sahara. In each case, he identifies those goals to restore degraded ecosystems as also being ideal plans for climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Today, numerous forms of technology are touted for climate change mitigation and adaptation; all are worthy of close examination, as was pointed out by Emily Boyd (2010) when she compared proposals presented in the BioScience special section. In the final section of the book (At the Turning Point), a clear analogy for the tipping points that climate and biodiversity scientists are so worried about today, the author takes a look at one group of biochar critics called Biofuelwatch, but he fails to clearly explain their origins or how they relate to Shiva's warnings at the beginning of the book. He does, however, present the International Biochar Initiative as a new advocacy group that is answering Biofuelwatch's criticisms point by point. Bates focuses on carbon trading and how biochar may become a component of projects that seek to sequester carbon, both in rural communities in underdeveloped countries and in agricultural enterprises in the developed world. Finally, he examines carbon-negative communities that are springing up throughout the world and how they serve as models for what we need to do in the face of climate change.
Bates cites British historian Arnold Toynbee, who affirmed that “Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.” For those of us who accompany the international negotiations—even if we are not in the working groups and plenary sessions—this is what we are seeing. Whether biochar really is part of the solution to climate change mitigation and adaptation remains to be seen, but Bates shows quite clearly that it can contribute to nurturing the soil to support food security, both in alternative agricultural schemes in the developed world and in small-scale agriculture of all kinds in the underdeveloped world. This is adaptation that contributes to mitigation.
For those who are not scientists directly involved with biochar, this is a book worth reading. It presents the science that got biochar rolling, the technologies already available, and how to use it to enhance food security and restore degraded agroecosystems. It is well designed for international agricultural aid staff, nongovernmental organization activists, and agricultural extensionists. Anyone interested in climate change mitigation and adaptation will gain something from this book, because Bates is careful to point out that mitigation and adaptation will only succeed if global society decides to change the ways it thinks about population and consumption.
