Hey, it's Elise Hugh. You're listening to TED Talks Daily. You're about to hear a climate solution and an agricultural solution in one. It's called Biochar and entrepreneur Axel Reno shares in his 2021 talk from TED at BCG the promise of biochar and how it can be one of the few

scalable CO2 removing options for the planet. It's incredibly promising and interesting stuff.

Imagine a farmer growing coffee in Gonsamba in the Mungo region of Cameroon.

Let's call him Mr. Iwane.

Mr. Iwane lives out of a small plot of land, growing food to feed his family,

and coffee to earn a very modest income.

While many of us in the Western world debate about

climate change, Mr. Ewanay knows it is real. The rainy season is becoming more erratic, impacting

his coffee production that has been declining year after year. Mr. Ewane is by no means responsible of climate change.

His own CO2 emissions are below 200 kilograms per year,

while us, in the developed world, emit 30 to 60 times more than he does.

Our way of living?

His problem.

The great story is that Mr. Iwan is that Mr. Iwani can improve his standard of living

while removing CO2 from the atmosphere and helping fight climate change.

This is not about trees.

It's much smarter.

Sounds interesting? Well, bear with me. In order to fight climate change, we need to reduce like crazy our greenhouse gas emissions.

Halving in the next 10 years the 50 billion tons that we emit annually.

And then aiming to halve again in the following decade.

While reduction is needed, it will not be enough to get us to zero emission that is needed to

stabilize climate. There will be, for a very long time, residual emissions from some industrial processes, from aviation, from agriculture, etc., etc.

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