Our mission is therefore a dual mission: to assist in the mitigation of global warming; as well as to drive an uplift in the quality of land usage and the prosperity of people who live on the land and depend upon it.
Opportunity
We see an opportunity to use the regeneration of land, and the resulting creation of Soil Organic Carbon, as a medium for financial exchange between wealthy, carbon emitting countries and the countries of Africa, which have been minimal emitters and yet invariably seriously impacted by the implications of global warming.
It is possible to envisage substantial flows of money travelling from North to South as polluting countries struggle to offset their emissions, as they transition to lower emitting activities over coming decades.
The arrival of substantial sums of monev into the hands of land owners and stewards in the countries of Africa creates an opportunity for them to invest in more productive and agroecological farm practices, thereby creating income generating opportunities, improving standards of health and education, whilst addressing global concerns around food security and the risks of climate migration.
There is a virtuous circle in all of this.
The Problem
Much of the land in sub Saharan Africa has been damaged over long periods by over-grazing by cattle.
As old maps of Africa show, the land had for millennia been open savannah land, where large herds of antelope and other animals roamed, pausing under the watchful eye of predators to graze on only the tops of grasses before moving on to new pastures.
The fencing-off of land and the provision of water for cattle over many decades has led to the degradation of perennial grasses and, in their stead, the spread of largely impenetrable bushes.
As a result, an estimated 45 million hectares in Namibia alone has turned into arid bush-encroached land with limited productive use, depleted Soil Organic Carbon and impaired biodiversity.
45 million
hectares in Namibia alone has turned into arid bush-encroached land
The Problem
Much of the land in sub Saharan Africa has been damaged over long periods by over-grazing by cattle.
As old maps of Africa show, the land had for millennia been open savannah land, where large herds of antelope and other animals roamed, pausing under the watchful eye of predators to graze on only the tops of grasses before moving on to new pastures.
The fencing-off of land and the provision of water for cattle over many decades has led to the degradation of perennial grasses and, in their stead, the spread of largely impenetrable bushes.
As a result, an estimated 45 million hectares in Namibia alone has turned into arid bush-encroached land with limited productive use, depleted Soil Organic Carbon and impaired biodiversity.
45 million
hectares in Namibia alone has turned into arid bush-encroached land
Our Solution
Our aim is to encourage the adoption of more agroecological farming and land management strategies, addressed at both large, several thousand hectare, farms as well as smallholder plots.
The larger farms are easier to address as they are usually owned freehold by a single farmer whereas the smallholder plots are often on communal land which adds complexity.
Larger Farms – Biochar
Our approach for the larger farms is to encourage the harvesting of encroacher bush through selective thinning; its conversion into carbon-rich biochar through burning in the absence of oxygen (a process known as pyrolysis) in specialist kilns; the quenching of the char with water; and the return of the biochar to the surface of the land.
It is well understood, from ancient times, that the spreading of biochar nourishes, the organisms that inhabit soil, thereby improving groundwater retention, aiding, as a result, the return of perennial grasses and, therefore, the more productive rearing of cattle and, in time, other agroecological uses of the land; and equally the accumulation of Soil Organic Carbon.
The quench water drained from the kilns can be used as a fertiliser and organic pest control in cultivated vegetable gardens.
We are undertaking pilot projects on a number of farms, by way of proof of concept, as we wait for Soil Organic Carbon to form, ready to be offered-up to the carbon offset markets on behalf of the landowners.
We envisage all the earnings from carbon sales to go back to the land owners other than a portion that we may seek to retain to be distributed to local communities.
Smallholder Plots – A Playbook
We plan to show smallholders how to adopt agroecological farming practices so as to increase yields and food security, as well as have a secondary benefit of sequestering more green house gases than currently.
We are working on a “playbook” for smallholders which we plan to roll out during the course of 2024.
Soil Organic Carbon
We have access to a novel new technology, pioneered by Downforce Technologies Ltd., which is able to measure Soil Organic Carbon remotely over 10 square meter plots at a time, looking back over six years. It uses, amongst other things, a combination of pre-existing datasets and satellite imagery.
Perivoli Innovations is a founder investor in Downforce Technologies Ltd.
Training
Ours is a training model, like our sister trust Perivoli Schools that focuses on training nursery school teachers.
We anticipate repurposing our cohort of Perivoli nursery school teacher trainers to provide instruction to land owners under supervision by our team at The Perivoli Rangeland Institute. The Trainers would in addition continue to oversee the nursery school teachers.
Training
Ours is a training model, like our sister trust Perivoli Schools that focuses on training nursery school teachers.
We anticipate repurposing our cohort of Perivoli nursery school teacher trainers to provide instruction to land owners under supervision by our team at The Perivoli Rangeland Institute. The Trainers would in addition continue to oversee the nursery school teachers.
Prosperity Uplift
Beyond helping to mitigate the challenges of global warming through additional greenhouse gas sequestration, we hope to see a significant uplift in the wellbeing of local people from the flow of carbon offset monies to farmers, both large scale and smallholders, as well as from an improvement in agricultural yields.
In order to measure the change in prosperity we plan to develop a context-specific, bottom-up, approach to measuring prosperity, led by members of local communities.
Citizen Scientists
We envisage, in due course, turning to the network of Perivoli-trained nursery school teachers to assist us to do so.
We are working on a model to turn them into “citizen scientists” under direction from our cohort of Perivoli Trainers, charged with explaining the case for changing to more agriecological farming practices as well as helping to track changes in terms of practices, agricultural yeilds and overall prosperity, as measured by the metrics that matter to them.
It is our understanding that the linkage of the creation of Soil Organic Carbon to a concurrent uplift in livelihoods will justify a higher price for the carbon in offset-markets, creating a virtuous circle of positives.
Governance
The Perivoli Rangeland Institute is controlled by the Perivoli Climate Trust which is a Namibian registered trust.
The Trustees of the Perivoli Climate Trust are James Alexandroff OBE, Tom Newton, Tom Goddard and Soraj Bissoonauth.
Funding
The Perivoli Rangeland Institute is funded by the Perivoli Climate Trust which is, in turn, funded by the Perivoli Foundation
The Perivoli Foundation has relied for funding hitherto on the Perivoli Trust. Going forward it is anticipated that Perivoli Innovations will start to fund the Foundation’s activities
Grant funding will also be sought.