Keeling Curve

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Project Summary / Description:

Prof. Clarke began investigating climate mitigation technologies 20 years ago, whilst heading a corporate global biofuels research programme. Recognising that effective implementation of biochar-based solutions should include the scale-out of multiple community-scale initiatives throughout the developing world, he left in 2015 to set up a bio-environmental consultancy to focus on this possibility. A massive surge in research worldwide is now providing answers to questions previously inhibiting the regulatory acceptance of biochar as a carbon sequestration medium, whilst rapidly expanding development of cloud-based technologies facilitates the required data collation and analysis from distributed operations. Options must be turned urgently into actions.

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Focussing on community-scale operations will empower all members of society to pursue both traditional and entrepreneurial activities made possible by the local production and utilization of biochar. A high-tech encryption mechanism for delivering payments directly to end-users is an integral part of the model, ensuring that rewards reflect the full diversity of the community engaged in the activity, minimizing risks such as illicit financial transactions that could arise from reliance upon top-down or third-party payment methods. 

Generating options for rural and sub-urban communities including women‚ groups and younger entrepreneurs to supplement incomes is critical to the maintenance of societal values and may indirectly assist in tackling the high birth rates and consequent deprivations characteristic of sub-Saharan Africa. The impact of biochar on ecosystem functions has been independently linked via Nature‚ Contributions to People to delivery of UN Sustainable Development Goals, and a number of studies have shown how the introduction of smaller-scale biochar units, from cookstove scale upwards can both facilitate the engagement of women in this activity, generate cleaner and healthier living conditions and reduce the burden of time and safety risks associated with gathering firewood. 

We are working towards these goals in discussion with Prof. Nathalie Holvoet, Institute of Development Policy, University of Antwerp, who already runs a project on gender and climate change with the university of Gondor in Ethiopia, and have also engaged positively with Mondelez Ghana to evaluate opportunities to support their Cocoa Life sustainable cocoa-sourcing programme.

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