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Invitiation to the next Community of Practice event jointly organized by GIZ Sector Project Soil Protection, Combating Desertification, Sustainable Land Management and the international “4 per 1000” Initiative on soils for food security and climate.



Event: Biochar – How to scale it?

When: 28th March from 10:00-12:00 CET

Where: Teams!
Besprechungs-ID: 368 048 687 679
Passcode: ozof36 




Biochar -How to scale it?

Biochar is a soil amendment, which supports plant growth, in particular in the tropics and subtropics. Across the tropics, its application to soils results in an average crop yield increase of 25%, while on a global average crop yields increase by 15%. Concurrently, biochar stores carbon over extensive time periods in soils due to the chemical conformation of the biochar carbon. Biochar is the resulting product from pyrolysis of biomass.

Biochar is primarily a soil conditioner that enables soils to better store and deliver nutrients and water to plants. Thereby, biochar itself is not a fertilizer, but it increases the capacity of soils to absorb nutrients from fertilizers – the soils’ cation exchange capacity is increased – and retain them in a plant available manner, which is particularly relevant for phosphorus in many tropical soils. Unlike most soil organic carbon, biochar is very recalcitrant against decomposition so that the structural amendment that it adds to soils stays there for long time periods.

Worldwide, the technical mitigation potential through biochar application is estimated at 2.6 (0.2-6.6) Gt CO2eq/year, out of which 1.1 (0.3-1.8) Gt CO2eq/year can be realized at costs of up to 100 USD/t CO2eq.

Despite those positive effects, scaling of biochar beyond individual projects has not yet taken off. Reasons might be that increased crop yields alone do not justify costs for production and application of biochar or a general lack of awareness on different levels from individual land users to policy makers.


Speakers:

In this event, we want to explore bottlenecks of the scaling of biochar and options how to overcome the same through the following presentations:

  • Luo Juan, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences - Converting crop residue waste biomass into biochar – experiences from The title of the presentation: Application Status and Prospect of biochar technology in China
  • Aqeel Rizvi - CIFOR-ICRAF - Biochar production and application in agroforestry systems in India – constraints and opportunities
  • Dries Roobroeck, IITA - Biochar use in small holder settings in Kenya – how to expand further
  • Johannes Meyer zu Drewer- Ithaka Institute- Artisan Standard – an option to enable investment in biochar? The Global Artisan C-Sink: Promoting and scaling biochar through carbon sink certification and valorisation.

After the presentations there will be time for Questions, Discussion & Input! 


Please find more information about Biochar on this page!


Find out more about our speakers here:


Luo Juan, PhD

Luo Juan is a senior engineer, master Supervisor, majoring in environmental engineering and working in Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (IEDA·CAAS). Has been engaging in research and development of agricultural waste recycling technology and equipments for a long time, as well as the green and low-carbon development of agriculture.


Aqeel Hasan Rizvi, PhD

Dr. Aqeel Hasan Rizvi is a Project Manager-Biochar and Integrated Farming System Scientist at CIFOR-ICRAF, Asia Program, New Delhi. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Agriculture sciences. Before joining ICRAF, he served a decade in ICARDA and brings the long experience of working/researching in the field with crops and soil; and dealing with farming communities. He has successfully managed research and development projects funded by international/ national donors and has collaborated with several national institutes (Indian Council of Agricultural Research -ICAR) and universities. He was a researcher at Indian Agricultural Research Institute, PUSA, New Delhi, for over five years in the Chickpea Program. He also worked as Training and Technical Officer at Institute for Micronutrient Technology, Pune, India. His role encompassed the training of farmers for balanced/complete plant nutrition and the prescription of crop nutrition requirements based on soil analysis and plant deficiency symptoms. To his credit, Dr Rizvi has a good number of national and international publications in the form of book chapters, research papers, abstracts, popular articles, etc.


Johannes Meyer zu Drewer 

Johannes Meyer zu Drewer is researcher at the Ithaka Institute for Carbon Strategies. The Ithaka Institute is an international open-source network for carbon strategies. Ithaka became a leading research collaboration for carbon sequestration and cycling through agronomic methods. The Institute is known for its expertise in production, post-production treatment, and use of biochar. Ithaka established the European Biochar Certificate, the Global Artisan C-Sink standard and is developing further methods for carbon sink accounting and certification.








Contribution by the International Biochar Initiative:

https://biochar-international.org/event/biochar-academy/