PHYLA Earth: Regenerative Agriculture for Zambia’s Future
PHYLA Earth is a remarkable organisation focusing on investment in “nature’s capital”. By engaging communities and corporations, weaving novel technologies together to find remarkable solutions, and connecting partners to new markets, they seek to boost the triple bottom line: bringing economic, social, and environmental benefits to Zambia.
PHYLA use advanced agronomic technologies to help farmers improve their soil management and encourage “regeneration agriculture” across Africa’s Great Green Wall. The Great Green Wall is a remarkable initiative to build an unbroken line of trees stretching 8,000km across the middle of the African continent to help fight the effects of climate change.
In Senegal, The Great Green Wall is using Acacia trees to help fight desertification. At its worst, this phenomenon can force families from their homes as the land becomes arid and leaves people’s home communities unliveable. In Zambia, PHYLA are hoping to use regenerative agriculture to engineer a new wealth creation dynamic; restoring arable land through resistant ecology in order to improve the land, create jobs, bolster communities, sequester carbon and produce food.
At COP27 PHYLA Earth’s CEO Rabih El Fadel and co-founder Harry Verns showcased their flagship project: the Pongamia regenerative agroforestry project at Konkola Copper Mines.
Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) is one of Africa’s largest integrated copper producers. The Zambian mine produces millions of tons of copper per year, which is fundamental to the electric battery value chain and so the future of sustainable transport. The metal is also central to the present and future prosperity of Zambia.
However, mining often comes at an environmental cost. In this case, mining increases the salinity and sodicity of the surrounding soil and limits natural plant growth – an issue for 833 million hectares of soil worldwide.
PHYLA Earth are developing a remarkable orchard in Chingola, Zambia, in order to combat this problem. Their work facilitates the prospect of continued extraction of minerals needed for the transition to clean energy, whilst supporting local farming and increasing ecological resilience.
The 4,000 elite Pongamia seedlings planted on untreated land next to the mines have experienced a mortality of less than 1%. The trees have instead grown, flowered, and produced pods in quantities expected from much more fertile soil. From an ecological perspective, the main benefits of Pongamia tree-based agroforestry is the potential to restore biodiversity, binding the soil with its roots and providing life giving nectar for vital pollinators.
But the benefits go even further. Pongamia have significant climate resistant properties, weathering drought, salinity changes and high levels of metals in the soils better than other plants. Seedlings, meanwhile, can be used as biopesticides, insect repellents, and as a source of food-grade vegetable oil.
According to the United Nations, investments in nature-based solutions to climate change must treble by 2030 if the world is to tackle the triple threat of climate, biodiversity and land degradation. PHYLA seek to foster a circular bioeconomy to meet this challenge. ]
The development of Pongamia orchards provide jobs and income. This income is in turn expected to facilitate further Pongamia plantations - again increasing biodiversity and providing more seedlings for useful by-products. The conceptual circularity of this cycle allows PHYLA to believe such investments can create what they refer to as “perennial dividends” on the initial investment.
The project is being extended to target 1.5 million saplings next year in India and Southern Africa.
At COP27 PHYLA showcased the Chingola project and made the case for why they believe “agro forestry is the perfect tool to remediate degraded land and rural markets” and to explain how “our trees provide farmers with highly productive, carbon removing perennial, drought tolerant option to increase farm revenue and power local economies.”
The company’s approach recognises that nature provides infinite value to the economy but requires unprecedented investment to secure future returns. PHYLA wishes to see the reconstruction of economic models to include nature as the planet’s most precious asset.
Tackling deforestation is a priority of the Zambian government. Environmental sustainability is one of the four pillars supporting the UPND’s economic transformation plan outlined in the Medium-Term Budget Plan. To this end, the New Dawn government are setting up timber exchanges around the country in order to increase transparency and reduce illicit and damaging deforestation practices.
Further, if you wish to invest in PHYLA Earth, it is worth knowing that green bonds (with a maturity of at least three years) have been granted tax exemptions aimed at encouraging investments in projects with environmental benefits.
PHYLA’s remarkable work would not be possible without the cooperative research of the University of Zambia, the University of Reading (UK) and the University of Bradford (UK). Such international intellectual exchanges and research are vital to driving the world’s economy towards a cleaner future. PHYLA’s researchers include specialists with 50 years of dedicated practice.
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