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Global crop waste burning – micro-biochar; how a small community development organization learned experientially to address a huge problem one tiny field at a time

The world’s 2.5 billion poorest people - small farmers living at the far fringe of the developing world – and their billion or so slightly better off neighbors burn 10.5 billion metric tonnes (tonnes) of crop waste annually. Smoke from their fires reddens the sun, closes airports, shuts schools and...

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Autor principal: Shafer, Michael
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7680978/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s42055-020-00037-y
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description The world’s 2.5 billion poorest people - small farmers living at the far fringe of the developing world – and their billion or so slightly better off neighbors burn 10.5 billion metric tonnes (tonnes) of crop waste annually. Smoke from their fires reddens the sun, closes airports, shuts schools and governments – and kills millions of people (World Health Organization (WHO). who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1). Their fires release 16.6 billion tonnes of CO(2), and emit 9.8 billion tonnes CO(2)e, 1.1 billion tonnes of smog precursors and 66 million tonnes of PM2.5. (Akagi et al., Atmospheric Chem Physics 4039-4071, 2011; Environmental Protection Agency, epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warming-potentials; Food and Agriculture Organization, FAOSTAT, http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data) [See Attachments 1–3. For details of the Attachments, please see the section below entitled “Availability of data and materials.”]. No one yet has stopped the burning. Seminars, health warnings, bans, threats, jailings, shootings – nothing has worked, because not one has offered farmers a better alternative. This is the story of how Warm Heart, a small, community development NGO, learned enough about small farmers’ plight to collaborate with them to develop the technology, training and social organization to mobilize villages to form biochar social enterprises. These make it profitable for farmers to convert crop waste into biochar, reducing CO(2)e, smog precursor and PM2.5 emissions, improving health and generating new local income – in short, to address the big three SDGs (1, 2 and 3) from the bottom. Warm Heart, however, wanted more; it wanted a system so appealing that it would spread by imitation and not require outside intervention. Based on what it has learned, Warm Heart wants to teach others that the knowledge to stop the smoke and improve the quality of one’s life does not require outside experts and lots of money. It wants to teach that anyone can learn to create a more sustainable world by themselves. This article traces the experiential learning process by which Warm Heart and its partners achieved their goals and shares Warm Heart’s open source solution. It serves four purposes. The article closely explores an experiential learning process. It details the underlying logic, workings and consequences of crop waste burning in the developing world. It demonstrates the application of this knowledge to the development of a sustainable – even profitable – solution to this global problem that does not require costly outside intervention but can be undertaken by local communities and small NGOs anywhere. Finally, it models how local communities, small NGOs and social investors can turn this global problem into a profitable business opportunity.
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spelling pubmed-76809782020-11-23 Global crop waste burning – micro-biochar; how a small community development organization learned experientially to address a huge problem one tiny field at a time Shafer, Michael Sustain Earth Research The world’s 2.5 billion poorest people - small farmers living at the far fringe of the developing world – and their billion or so slightly better off neighbors burn 10.5 billion metric tonnes (tonnes) of crop waste annually. Smoke from their fires reddens the sun, closes airports, shuts schools and governments – and kills millions of people (World Health Organization (WHO). who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1). Their fires release 16.6 billion tonnes of CO(2), and emit 9.8 billion tonnes CO(2)e, 1.1 billion tonnes of smog precursors and 66 million tonnes of PM2.5. (Akagi et al., Atmospheric Chem Physics 4039-4071, 2011; Environmental Protection Agency, epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warming-potentials; Food and Agriculture Organization, FAOSTAT, http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data) [See Attachments 1–3. For details of the Attachments, please see the section below entitled “Availability of data and materials.”]. No one yet has stopped the burning. Seminars, health warnings, bans, threats, jailings, shootings – nothing has worked, because not one has offered farmers a better alternative. This is the story of how Warm Heart, a small, community development NGO, learned enough about small farmers’ plight to collaborate with them to develop the technology, training and social organization to mobilize villages to form biochar social enterprises. These make it profitable for farmers to convert crop waste into biochar, reducing CO(2)e, smog precursor and PM2.5 emissions, improving health and generating new local income – in short, to address the big three SDGs (1, 2 and 3) from the bottom. Warm Heart, however, wanted more; it wanted a system so appealing that it would spread by imitation and not require outside intervention. Based on what it has learned, Warm Heart wants to teach others that the knowledge to stop the smoke and improve the quality of one’s life does not require outside experts and lots of money. It wants to teach that anyone can learn to create a more sustainable world by themselves. This article traces the experiential learning process by which Warm Heart and its partners achieved their goals and shares Warm Heart’s open source solution. It serves four purposes. The article closely explores an experiential learning process. It details the underlying logic, workings and consequences of crop waste burning in the developing world. It demonstrates the application of this knowledge to the development of a sustainable – even profitable – solution to this global problem that does not require costly outside intervention but can be undertaken by local communities and small NGOs anywhere. Finally, it models how local communities, small NGOs and social investors can turn this global problem into a profitable business opportunity. BioMed Central 2020-11-23 2020 /pmc/articles/PMC7680978/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s42055-020-00037-y Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Research
Shafer, Michael
Global crop waste burning – micro-biochar; how a small community development organization learned experientially to address a huge problem one tiny field at a time
title Global crop waste burning – micro-biochar; how a small community development organization learned experientially to address a huge problem one tiny field at a time
title_full Global crop waste burning – micro-biochar; how a small community development organization learned experientially to address a huge problem one tiny field at a time
title_fullStr Global crop waste burning – micro-biochar; how a small community development organization learned experientially to address a huge problem one tiny field at a time
title_full_unstemmed Global crop waste burning – micro-biochar; how a small community development organization learned experientially to address a huge problem one tiny field at a time
title_short Global crop waste burning – micro-biochar; how a small community development organization learned experientially to address a huge problem one tiny field at a time
title_sort global crop waste burning – micro-biochar; how a small community development organization learned experientially to address a huge problem one tiny field at a time
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7680978/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s42055-020-00037-y
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