The many challenges that face Haiti and its people have been chronicled over the last year in newspapers and on television, in blog posts and radio reports. Haiti has been portrayed as a land devastated by a crippling mix of political instability, economic stagnation, and natural disaster. Its subtitle that's repeated in nearly every news report in the media -- "the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere" -- rings even truer now than it did during the first days of 2011.

Production of biochar (the carbon (C)-rich solid formed by pyrolysis of biomass) and its storage in soils have been suggested as a means of abating climate change by sequestering carbon, while simultaneously providing energy and increasing crop yields. Substantial uncertainties exist, however, regarding the impact, capacity and sustainability of biochar at the global level. In this paper we estimate the maximum sustainable technical potential of biochar to mitigate climate change. Annual net emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane and nitrous oxide could be reduced by a maximum of 1.8 Pg CO₂-C equivalent (CO₂-C_e) per year (12% of current anthropogenic CO₂-C_e emissions; 1 Pg=1 Gt), and total net emissions over the course of a century by 130 Pg CO₂-C_e, without endangering food security, habitat or soil conservation.

Biochar has a larger climate-change mitigation potential than combustion of the same sustainably procured biomass for bioenergy, except when fertile soils are amended while coal is the fuel being offset. nature - http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v1/n5/full/ncomms1053.html