The secret of black soil

The secret of black soil Every day millions of people around the world literally flush away what could be one of the most valuable resources when it comes to growing food. Environmentalists like Dennis Raetzel are trying to change that. At a vegetable garden tucked away behind an old metal factory building in an industrial area in eastern Berlin, Dennis Raetzel tends to his plants. He walks along the 40 raised beds made of old wooden crates. "These are called 'tomatillos' - they're green tomatoes from Mexico. We also have corn and pumpkins," he says. This urban garden might look like any other in Berlin, but there's something in the soil that's different. Raetzel, a physicist by trade, is currently working on a project he thinks could change the way we grow food. "Terra Preta is a solution, because you can be really, really efficient with the http://www.dw.de/the-secret-of-black-soil/a-18199797

Soil Carbon Advances Could be Key to Improving Food and Water Security-

UK - The Global Advances in Soil Carbon Management recommendations, which have been compiled by a team of international scientists, could have a significant impact on land degradation, food security, water quality and greenhouse gas emissions from land. ...
http://www.thecropsite.com/news/17112/soil-carbon-advances-could-be-key-to-improving-food-and-water-security

Biochar helps soil microbes cope with drought

NEWS Jul 15, 2014 Biochar helps soil microbes cope with drought Biochar, a solid material obtained from the carbonization of biomass, has many uses as a soil improver and also as a method of carbon sequestration. Now a team from Spain and China has discovered another useful property of biochar – it improves the resistance of soil communities, such as bacteria and fungi, to drought. Researchers from the Universidad Politec

http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/news/57897

Saraki, Others to Raise $500m Fund for Clean Global Cookstoves Project, Articles | THISDAY LIVE

Hammed Shittu in Ilorin.
The Chairman, Senate Committee on Environment and Ecology, Dr. Bukola Saraki has joined former US Secretary of States, Hillary Clinton in raising about $500million, comprising $286m in grants, $127m in investments and several millions in guarantees for the global clean cooking sector during the Cookstoves Future Summit’s inaugural commitment roundtable last weekend.


The aim of the fund rais
Read at

Saraki, Others to Raise $500m Fund for Clean Global Cookstoves Project, Articles | THISDAY LIVE

Saraki, Others to Raise $500m Fund for Clean Global Cookstoves Project, Articles | THISDAY LIVE

Saraki, Others to Raise $500m Fund for Clean Global Cookstoves Project, Articles | THISDAY LIVE

Change the way clean cook stoves are marketed | Devex

• INSIDE DEVELOPMENT

#SHEBUILDS INNOVATIONS: KATHLEEN O’DELL & SOPHIA PETERS

Change the way clean cook stoves are marketed

By Sophia Peters, Kathleen O’Dell21 March 2014

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Women use fuel-efficient stoves to cook their meals in the Rwanda camp for internally displaced people in Tawila, North Darfur — part of the Safe Access to Firewood and Alternative Energy project run by the World Food Program. Photo by: Albert Gonzalez Farran/UNAMID /  CC BY-NC-ND

Despite known benefits, improved technologies, renewed vigor from international donors and new high-profile supporters, the vast majority of the world’s poor have yet to fully embrace clean cook stoves.

This means that, after 30 years of effort from the donor and philanthropic community, only one third of the target market has adopted an improved cook stove, leaving approximately 1.6 billion traditional consumers of biomass without a clean stove.

This not only calls for a paradigm shift in how clean cook stoves are promoted and distributed, but also an overhaul in the strategy to improve the quality of life for this segment of the world’s population. With this in mind, a team at Deloitte surveyed what donors and philanthropic organizations are currently doing around clean stoves and made some suggestions on how it can be improved.

Why the current distribution of cook stoves is ineffective

With so much need for the product and so many recent improvements in product design, the question then became: Why are these stoves not in demand? And how can development and health organizations stimulate demand so that their benefits can be more widely realized by those who need them most?

how funders can use their investments to be impactful and enhance market-based approaches without hindering commercial activity. read at: 

http://dupress.com/articles/generating-consumer-demand-for-clean-cookstoves-in-base-of-pyramid-markets/ 

We draw on illustrative examples of socially beneficial consumer durable goods for insight, such as water filters, electric burners, and purified water sachets, which have been marketed to bBOP populations around the world. 

Change the way clean cook stoves are marketed | Devex

Deutsche Bank Partners with the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves to Mobilize USD 100 Million in New Investments

Deutsche Bank Partners with the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves to Mobilize USD 100 Million in New Investments

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Published: Nov 21, 2014 8:20 a.m. ET

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NEW YORK, Nov 21, 2014 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Deutsche Bank today announced, in partnership with Bank of America, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, development finance institutions and private investors, a continued commitment to investment in the clean cooking sector through creating a USD 100 million fund to support social enterprises that advance and deploy clean cookstove solutions. To help finance early-stage clean cooking ventures with affordable capital, the Bank’s Global Social Finance Group, together with the Alliance, established a USD 4 million Clean Cooking Working Capital Fund.

The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves was formed to address the use of traditional cookstoves and open fires, which typically employ coal, wood or other solid biomass for fuel. Relied upon by more than three billion of the global population, these inefficient cookstoves produce toxic fumes and pollutants that are responsible for some 4 million premature deaths each year in developing countries, according to the World Health Organization.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/deutsche-bank-partners-with-the-global-alliance-for-clean-cookstoves-to-mobilize-usd-100-million-in-new-investments-2014-11-21