Mark McHenry

The Africa Mining Vision and Action Plan articulate a vision for the “transparent, equitable and optimal exploitation of mineral resources to underpin broad - based sustainable growth and socioeconomic development” across the African continent. The history of the development of these documents is best understood against the backdrop of significant disappointment with regard to the poor outcomes of exploitation of natural resources and sometimes crippling social and environmental legacies. At the same time these documents express a determination to build capacity and capability to ensure exploitation of mineral and energy assets can lead to positive structural transformation. This panel will discuss the AMV and Action Plan’s 9 programme clusters in the context of an African Renaissance to explore how Australia has and can further engage with pan - African institutions and other partners by examining three potential mechanisms in detail.

Globalisation in research and development is progressing rapidly. Particularly through the governments of UK, USA and Australia and private foundations such as Bill & Melinda Gates, substantial investments are being made for agricultural research in Africa through collaborative projects. Strategies must be in place to get the most benefit from these international investments in Africa. The aims of this presentation are to discuss: a) the role of international research collaborations for enhancing agricultural productivity, b) strategies for establishing effective global collaborations between African and non - African scientists. Short term and long term strategies must be in place to increase in agricultural productivity. Short term strategy may involve in training farmers through extension services towards implementing new farming systems. Training farmers with new simple methods should provide an immediate increase in productivity. Human resource and infrastructure capacity building may be viewed as a long term strategy. Africa and African people can only be lifted up with the greater involvement of African scientists and policy makers with enhanced collaborations with international partners from developed nations. Although international funds present great opportunities for the agricultural research in the way to increasing agricultural productivity in Africa, due to the lack of know - how and practical information, fewer African scientists are able to undertake leadership roles in internationally collaborative projects. Therefore it is important that African scientists be trained, for example, in area of grant writing for enabling them to ask critical questions to create best outputs for the African Farmers.

Road construction has a considerable carbon footprint and is likely to be impacted significantly by international and national responses to climate change. Although avoidance of carbon emissions during the design and construction phases is preferred, it is inevitable that some carbon emissions will result in large projects, due to the carbon intensive nature of road construction. Typical offset projects have focused around the biosequestration of carbon, including large-scale tree planting. Whilst tree planting projects achieve broader benefits from reafforestation, concerns surrounding the biodiversity value of largely monoculture, agro-forestry projects are adding to traditional criticisms such as the measurability and permanency. Concerns over tree planting as an approach to offsetting have paved the way for consideration of other biological methods for carbon sequestration that are better able to respond to tests of measurability and permanency and attempt to preserve the biodiversity value of cleared land. Biochar, charcoalised woody biomass, is a soil improver, which is being investigated globally due to its potential to store carbon in the soil for extremely long time periods. On-site production of biochar using cleared vegetation is an approach to carbon offsetting that allows for both the sequestration of carbon in the soil and enhances revegetation activities in the road reserve. Low technology approaches are practical, using existing road construction equipment to dig pits in which the vegetation is slowly carbonised through low oxygen combustion. High technology but portable approaches for on-site generation using modern biomass to energy conversion technologies (pyrolysis and gasification) are also possible and able to produce biochar and renewable fuels, which can be used in a number of conventional generation technologies such as internal combustion engines and turbines. Roadside vegetation used in modern biomass pyrolysis technologies has the potential to produce around 30 kg of carbon sequestration for each gigajoule of renewable fuel produced. Biochar may sequester up to 50 per cent of the carbon in the original vegetation, having the potential to become an important part of future revegetation activities in road construction This paper will discuss several approaches to onsite biochar production from road vegetation, in particular a recent trial from Western Australia and the opportunities for reducing carbon emissions and the sequestration of carbon that would otherwise be burnt or left to rapidly decay as chipped or mulched material.