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Company News, Environment, India, Sustainability

Supported through Amazon’s Right Now Climate Fund (RNCF), the initiative will establish 75 urban food gardens across Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Kolkata municipal schools.

Amazon and ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability, South Asia, today announced the launch of an extensive urban food garden initiative to improve nutrition for children in municipal schools in India. The initiative aims to set up a network of 75 urban food gardens in municipal schools across Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad and Kolkata. This US$1 million initiative is built on India’s School Nutrition Garden Scheme and is expected to provide 15 million school meals over three years for children in need.

The gardens in these urban biodiversity havens are meticulously designed small cultivation spaces promoting local food production and community engagement. In addition to encouraging state schools to grow food and supplying a greater variety of fresh produce in students’ midday meals, the initiative also supports educational experiences in composting and rainwater recycling. 

The urban food garden initiative is supported through Amazon’s Right Now Climate Fund, a $100 million initiative supporting climate resilience and nature conservation in communities where it operates. This fund finances nature-based solutions that complement Amazon’s broader operational decarbonisation and sustainability efforts. Urban gardens created through this initiative are designed to be biodiverse, productive, and resilient to the adverse impacts of climate change, contributing to the overall wellbeing of the environment and communities involved.

“The urban garden initiative with ICLEI South Asia is not just about growing food, it’s about nourishing futures. This aligns deeply with Amazon’s commitment to conserving, restoring, and supporting nature and our communities,” said Abhinav Singh, Vice President Operations, Amazon India. “By supporting this transformative initiative, we’re investing in the wellbeing of India’s youth and communities, environment, and sustainable development goals.”

In areas where space is limited, machaan (trellis) farming, or multilayer farming, will be employed to support year-round cultivation. This system helps to effectively utilize space, with vegetable plants such as ginger cultivated on the ground, and creepers like gourds covering the top of the trellis. Where there is space in the middle, tomatoes and brinjals can be grown. This practice of creating micro-habitats not only increases crop diversity, but also addresses the challenges of water logging and enhances overall produce availability. The urban gardens will enhance the air-quality while supporting food base for pollinator species such as bees. Improving pollinator diversity and supporting an improved habitat for them will contribute to addressing the global crisis of pollinator decline. Additionally, these urban biodiversity havens will serve as a valuable educational tool, giving students firsthand experience with natural processes such as pollination and plant growth cycles.

Supported through Amazon’s Right Now Climate Fund

R&D, Sustainability, World

The first-of-its-kind data highlights biochar’s potential to scale carbon removals as a win-win solution for people and the planet

Ground-breaking new research shows that carbon removal solution biochar can play a significant role in global emissions reductions at the global and national levels. The ancient farming practice can help countries mitigate climate change threats and decarbonise at scale while also adapting to the effects of climate change and unlocking economic and social benefits.

First developed by Indigenous communities in the Amazon thousands of years ago and now a rapidly expanding global industry, biochar is a material created by heating organic materials — such as forestry and crop residues — that would otherwise release emissions when decomposing. By converting these materials into biochar instead, carbon is locked for centuries to millennia. When used as a soil amendment, biochar can improve soil health and increase water and nutrient retention in soils, helping to both mitigate against and adapt to the effects of climate change.

Published in the peer-reviewed journal Biochar and commissioned by the International Biochar Initiative (IBI), the research quantifies biochar’s CDR potential across 155 countries, with net removal potential on a national and global scale, assuming a sustainable supply of no purpose-grown biomass quantities. Currently providing the vast majority of delivered carbon credits, biochar is an affordable, scalable, and readily available solution that, unlike other CDR methods, also provides environmental and social co-benefits like improved soil health leading to increased crop yields.

“This is the first research to quantify the significant role biochar can play in worldwide climate action and carbon removal strategies, at the level of individual countries. To scale biochar to its full potential, we now have a starting point of what is possible at the country level. By considering the climate impact of co-benefits such as fossil fuel displacement, improved crop yields, and healthier soil, we can also go farther, getting a better picture of biochar’s complete climate solution potential,” said Dr Thomas Trabold, co-author and research professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology’s Golisano Institute for Sustainability. 

The report’s consideration of small-emitting countries is particularly significant. Though many small-emitting countries have contributed the least to climate change, they are experiencing its impacts disproportionately, from soil erosion to extreme weather. Biochar offers a circular and sustainable approach to climate change mitigation, giving these countries the opportunity to maximize carbon removal while increasing national and local revenues. It makes agricultural production more sustainable at all scales, from protecting soil security to creating employment opportunities at the community and commercial levels. For farmers facing multiple challenges related to climate change, biochar is a game-changer.

The first-of-its-kind data highlights biochar's potential to