A few years ago, a group of young social scientists decided to team up to study the opportunities for least developed countries (LDCs) to produce biofuels. Given a set of objective parameters - the presence of large rural populations, optimal agro-ecological conditions for energy crops, the urgent need for rural development, and the rising price of oil - it looked like a biofuel industry could play a promising role in socio-economic development.

It became clear to us that many of these countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, can produce a significant surplus of biofuels, without impacting the food, fiber, and forest product markets of their local economies. These countries have a comparative advantage over higher-cost producers in temperate climes. Thus the idea of a 'pact' between the North and the South emerged, and 'Biopact' was born. The basic plan was that, after meeting their own needs, poor countries would export biofuels to Europe and the United States, and invest the proceeds back into their own rural economies.

LDCs shared our enthusiasm for biofuels. Economists, development think tanks and agricultural policy organisations also supported the view that biofuels offered a new opportunity for countries with large rural populations.

However, in order to make such a North-South trade arrangement a real win-win, many preconditions would have to be fulfilled. Markets would have to be opened, farm subsidies and trade barriers in the North removed, technology transfers implemented, and social and environmental sustainability in the South guaranteed. This was a very tall order indeed.

In the event, however, the power blocks of the EU and the United States decided to give their own emerging biofuel sectors a boost. Mandates and targets, lavish subsidies, tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade - many brought to light by the GSI - have made the dream of a 'Biopact' impossible. Well-protected biofuel producers in the EU and the U.S. received massive investments from the private sector, and production based on food crops has increased rapidly. Food prices have risen as a result, directly impacting urban populations and food-importing countries in the South.

Meanwhile, scientists, civil society organisations and conservation groups entered the debate and pointed to the many potential drawbacks of biofuels. Biofuels are problematic for technical reasons: biomass can be used more efficiently for the production of power, and a transition to electric vehicles is smarter over the long term; for social reasons: biofuels could perpetuate land-related injustices instead of facilitating land reform; for environmental reasons: without a clear sustainability framework, production of biofuel feedstocks threatens biodiverse and carbon-rich ecosystems, such as rainforests, while 'indirect emissions' negatively alter the carbon balance of 'climate neutral' biofuels; and for economic reasons: the sector is likely to benefit subsidised farmers and agribusiness first, smallholders last.

Given this state of affairs, Biopact came to face an increasingly stark dilemma: on the one hand, we wanted to continue to support biofuels as a matter of principle, in order to keep the idea of a North-South pact alive. We did so mainly by tracking technological innovations - such as the emergence of 'third' and even 'fourth' generation fuels - which promised answers to the the criticisms leveled against the sector as a whole. But the mere act of supporting high-tech biofuels played out in favor of the big agribusiness interests, and made our own vision less and less likely to be realised anytime soon.

We were left with no choice other than to go back and re-examine our original question: how can we use markets for renewable energy and ecosystem services (such as carbon markets) in a way that benefits rural populations in poor countries?

In a twist of irony, the same social, environmental and economic problems associated with the emerging global biofuels industry provide the kernels of a possible answer. It consists of assisting food-insecure poor farmers at the tropical forest margins to change from using 'slash-and-burn' land-use practices, which keep them in poverty, towards practices that confer multiple environmental and social benefits.

Some 300 to 500 million farmers in the tropics rely on shifting cultivation and practise a type of 'slash-and-burn' farming. This land-use strategy allows them to grow crops for a few years, after which they have to move on because the nutrient-poor, acidic tropical soils rapidly become depleted. All the while, they contribute to deforestation, out of necessity. This land-use system is a key factor in rural poverty.

But an innovative new approach could turn this situation around. It is based on biochar - a carbon-rich product obtained from the pyrolysis of biomass. Used as a soil amendment, biochar cures nutrient-poor tropical soils and makes them fertile. The porous char does so by enhancing the nutrient retention capacity of soils, as well as their cation exchange and water-retention capacity, and by lowering their pH. When tropical problem soils are treated with char they can sustain agricultural production for longer periods of time. This way, slash-and-burn farmers can slow the rate of deforestation, and grow more food and biomass (which can in turn be transformed into biochar).

Moreover, biochar is largely inert and oxidises extremely slowly, which is why it also doubles as a stable and easily manageable carbon sink for which credits are available.

If biochar is used as the central ingredient of a holistic development approach, it offers an amazing opportunity to help end hunger among some of the world's poorest communities, to slow deforestation drastically, and to contribute to reducing emissions from land-use change by establishing carbon sinks. What is more, it can be coupled with renewable and low-cost electricity production for rural populations currently without access to modern energy services.

By making soils fertile and productive, communities of small farmers can be rooted locally and their livelihoods improved to such an extent that they are not forced to make the difficult choice between either migrating to the cities to join the growing number of slum-dwellers, or to become landless and 'cheap' seasonal laborers for large agribusinesses, such as those involved in the sugarcane, palm oil or rubber industries.

Thus, this locally rooted concept meets many of the goals we set out with the Biopact and can help smallholders in tropical countries in a much more robust, efficient and concrete way than the abstract, global biofuels market ever can. For this reason, we created the Biochar Fund, which will implement this innovative concept in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The lesson we have learned from our participation in the biofuels debate is that out of crisis and complexity, smart and elegant solutions to key environmental problems can emerge. It is not easy to think through the multiple consequences of a new economic sector while it is developing itself in a chaotic, feverish and rapid manner. But by keeping an open mind, and by constantly re-examining ones' own views, unexpected opportunities emerge. We think biochar is such an opportunity: it offers clear benefits over biofuels, at least for developing countries in the tropics.

To shift paradigms required having the courage to admit that some well-intentioned ideas - in this case liquid biofuels - can go wrong. Negating or downplaying this reality has no place in the bright green world many of us are trying to create.
 
Laurens Rademakers, Editor, Biochar Fund