Biogeotherapy

By Benoit Lambert

Biogeotherapy – nature-based climate solutions, life as a geological healing force (27 000 words), presents a movement of farmers, scientists, politicians, and diplomatic actors. It is based on four natural restorative practices: holistic grazing management, no-till agriculture with cover crops, biochar, and massive reforestation. Agro-forestry, blue carbon, living machines, the restoration of peatlands, and other nature-based solutions (NbS) or negative emission technologies (NET) are also briefly described.

 

The 4 per 1000—the diplomatic arm of this movement which is rising at the forefront of action for climate restoration—is described. 4 per 1000 are part of a movement for regenerative agriculture, regenerative ranching and for the negative emissions bio-sourced materials. Finance carbon levers, such as carbon dioxide removal certificates, are presented, with their controversies.

 

Pharaonic, Babylonian, and vertiginous words to define the climate challenge often sound too weak for such a journey. Biogeotherapy leads to Civilization 280 and offers a long path forward to genuinely desirable sustainable economic development.

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: CIV280
• Release date: Jul 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223197935

Benoit Lambert

Benoit Lambert, Ph. D. est né au Québec. Il a habité 18 ans à Genève où il a enseigné les doctrines politiques à l'Université de Genève, le développement durable et les conventions internationales sur l'environnement dans une école de commerce. De 2000 à 2009 il a dirigé la branche francophone de l'Institut Worldwatch comme éditeur du rapport annuel State of the World et World Watch magazine (L'État de la planète).

Book preview

Contents

Introduction

Biogeotherapy as a concept

The counter-intuitive

No-till agriculture,

Biochar: fire to cool the Earth

Planting a trillion trees:

« 4 per 1000 », biogeotherapy diplomacy

Other nature-based negative emissions technologies for capturing and sequestrating GHG

Offsets for a biogeotherapy?

Broadening the scope of biogeotherapy

​The global race to certify removals[7]

Discussion

Conclusion:

References

Organizations for carbon dioxide removal (as they appear in the book, and, as organizations present

Annex 1: Soil Diplomacy:

Annex II: Biomimicry, learning from nature

Annex III: Elon Musk vs

Annex IV: Regenerative Organic Certification, a tool for a biogeotherapy

Annex V: Kiss the Ground,

Addendum

Back cover

BIOGEOTHERAPY

nature-based climate solutions,

life as a geological healing force

Benoit Lambert, Ph.D. Born in Québec, he lived for 18 years in Geneva where he taught political doctrines at Geneva University and sustainable development, including international conventions on the environment at the International University in Geneva, a business school. From 2000 to 2009, Benoit led the French branch of the Worldwatch Institute as the editor and publisher in French of the annual report State of the World and World Watch magazine (L’État de la planète in French). He also taught carbon credits in the world of finance—for Abengoa that was starting a program at the time.

Benoit has planted trees 20 summers in five Canadian provinces, his hands-on side. He currently is launching the biochar industry in the Canadian boreal forest with Cbiochar Inc., a company he founded. He wrote Cyclopolis, ville nouvelle in 2004, a book announcing the future popularity of cycling in cities and its influence on municipal politics. He can be contacted regarding his course Biogeotherapy, or conferences, at [e-mail]

This is the first version of Biogeotherapy, May 2023.

Please, consider a review, it will promote nature-based climate solutions.

Introduction

Biogeotherapy—nature-based climate solutions, life as a geological healing force, tells the history of a movement to extract/remove and sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by regenerating natural carbon sinks. It is a movement for climate restoration, to reverse desertification, for biodiversity. Biogeotherapy presents its main elements and its outline.

Since the 1987 Brundtland report, Our Common Future, decision-makers and authorities have defined sustainable development as the new Grail. It includes renewable energies and materials, recycling, industrial ecology concepts for a circular economy, conservation measures. While all these initiatives and ideas go in the right direction, a movement is now taking shape proposing a lot more: healing the Earth using life and science, a biogeotherapy—nature-inspired climate restoration with negative emissions processes. Reversing global warming, with numerous co-benefits.

We believe these ideas started some thirty-five years ago. Reacting to an article in Nature, in 1987 Dr. Thomas Goreau published a letter to the editor in which he insisted on the need to consider natural carbon sinks in the fight against global warming. Goreau referred to « the other half of the global carbon dioxide problem » (27). Two years later he wrote in Ambio: « If the atmosphere is to be stabilized a balance must be sought between sources and sinks of CO2. » (28)

These words are among the first expression of what is on its way to becoming a huge protean world movement for carbon capture and storage. Two main approaches are debated: nature-based climate solutions, and, technological engineering approaches. While definitions are blurred, biogeotherapy discussed in this book refers mainly to nature-based climate solutions using photosynthesis. It is abbreviated NbS. The biogeotherapy and the engineering approaches both aim at re-establishing the climate of the Holocene for the climate restoration. But NbS has numerous co-benefits. As an example: with soils’ biological health, their capacity to absorb and retain water is rebuilt. It improves soil health and replenishes forests and ecosystems. NbS is multidimensional and multi-purpose. It has numerous co-benefits that geological approaches usually don’t have, or less so. Yet we have to underline that since we started this research, carbon dioxide capture sequestration and utilization—including liquified carbon dioxide use in concrete—has been impressive and deserve the highest consideration. 

Nature-based solutions want to develop regenerative animal husbandry, regenerative agriculture, restorative materials and products, or reforestation. These extract more carbon and other greenhouse gases than they emit. Some restorative materials can become a substitute for currently used materials. The United Nations uses the expression nature-based climate solutions, but, « regenerative development » is also appearing. CDR is the abbreviation for carbon dioxide removal while NET refers to negative emissions technology. All economies—national, regional or local—are concerned. Less anthropocentric than other expressions, biogeotherapy is yet a genuine project for human societies, animals and for ecosystems. An action plan for survival. Biogeotherapy aims at healing soils, rivers and oceans, mangroves and saline grasses, forests and prairies, all ecosystems we depend on. If realized, biogeotherapy maintains glaciers where it supplies water and energy production where it is processed through turbines. The biosphere, the lithosphere, the atmosphere, the cryosphere and the hydrosphere; the entire Earth system needs biogeotherapy. The current Anthropogenic global climate change is threatening humanity. It must be reversed, not just mitigated. Restoring the climate and biosphere’s health will require efforts of pharaonic proportions.

An American connection based in France

Worried by climatic issues, Professor Richard Grantham, an American who emigrated to France in the sixties, entered into correspondence with Thomas Goreau following Goreau’s 1987 letter in Nature. In May 1991 Grantham organized and headed the « Colloquium on Modeling Geotherapy for Global Changes » at Lyon’s Claude Bernard University, where he was a professor—involved with genetic human sequencing but in parallel very worried by environmental degradation. The colloquium was organized for United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, where the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was voted on by Governments with the intention to influence its outcome with scientific input. A four-page Geotherapy program proposal was signed by seven members of the International Union of Quaternary Research geotherapy group, including Thomas Goreau. It was sent to the United Nations Conference of the Environment and Development (the Rio conference secretariat based in Geneva) and addressed to its senior science advisor Dr. Hao Qian.

Many other UN Climate Change meetings followed. A 34 chapter book on Geotherapy was published much later in 2015, Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase (30). Geotherapy presents diverse approaches and in-situ experiences to reduce, extract and store greenhouse gases, for good use of GHG to regenerate soils’ biological fertility, by re-activation of nature’s trophic food chain.

A rather abstract phrase, sustainable development, becomes very real through examples of regenerative practices. We believe Geotherapy is an original landmark of a nascent movement for GHG extraction and storage. Approaches presented are essentially based on nature, « Down to Earth » as Goreau wrote. It proposes relatively low-tech strategies for healing and bringing back Earth’s system natural stability. Yet solutions that made the book are not exclusively from photosynthesis—remineralization of soils and enhanced weathering are also presented. Decentralized solutions proposed in Geotherapy are, by their core qualities very different from geo-engineering Goreau says. Geotherapy keeps geo-engineering at arm's length. We enlighten these differences through this book.

Richard Grantham is presented as the father of geotherapy, the book as a reminiscence of his ideas. At the time Richard Grantham was proposing the reforestation of North Africa, a region deforested over thousands of years including during the Roman Empire.

In its first assessment report in 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognizes reforestation as a carbon-storing sink. At the time reforestation was the sole sink presented. The second report added fertilization of oceans and sequestration through soils. The third alkalization of oceans and enhanced weathering. Progressively other methods are added, direct air capture (DAC), bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration (BECCS), and biochar.

A shift occurred. Until recently ‘avoided emissions’ were bought as carbon offsets by countries applying the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC. These were acquired based on the clean development mechanism projects generating certified emissions reductions (CER). They are often referred to as avoided emissions. CERs covered some countries’ and sectors’ ‘binding obligations’ on compliance markets, with some success