Page 4 - Vol.37-No.7

FAO LAUNCHES PRACTICAL TOOLS TO ENCOURAGE

SOIL ORGANIC CARBON SEQUESTRATION
EDITORIAL

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United through poor soil management would hamper efforts to
Nations (FAO) today launched two practical instruments contain a rise in global temperatures.
designed to encourage soil organic carbon mainte- As the climate changes, it is likely that more carbon
nance and sequestration, a key tool for climate action.
will be lost to the atmosphere than be sequestered into
Carbon sequestration involves the removal of carbon the soil if business-as-usual agricultural practices con-
dioxide from the atmosphere in the form of soil organic tinue, resulting in a soil carbon-climate feedback loop
carbon (SOC), with the capture of CO2 in the soil seen that could further accelerate climate change. Of partic-
as an effective way of reducing greenhouse gases. Be- ular concern are hotspots such as peatlands, black soils,
cause soil rich in carbon is also healthier and more fer- permafrost and grasslands, which contain the highest
WLOH LW FDQ EHQHÞW IDUPHUV ZKLOH KHOSLQJ PHHW WKH WDU- amount of soil organic carbon.
gets of the Paris Agreement on climate change and the
Managing soils in a sustainable way and rehabilitating
Sustainable Development Goals.
degraded agricultural soils and grasslands can there-
The two products unveiled today, part of the RECSOIL fore help mitigate the impacts of the climate crisis and
initiative, are a global map illustrating how much and improve food security and nutrition. Healthy soils have
where CO2 can be sequestered by soils -- the GSOCseq, proven to be not only more productive, but also more re-
and a technical manual of good practices to sequester silient to changing climate patterns and extreme events.
and maintain SOC stocks in soils.
7KH *62&VHT ODXQFKHG WRGD\ LV WKH ÞUVW FRXQWU\ GULY-
“We must look for innovative ways to transform our en global estimation of SOC sequestration potential
DJUL IRRG V\VWHPV WR PRUH HIÞFLHQW LQFOXVLYH UHVLOLHQW around the world. The resulting map offers various lay-
and sustainable. Healthy soils are critical to achieving ers of information, helping users visualise crucial data
this,” FAO Director-General QU Dongyu told the open- such as initial SOC stocks and predicted SOC stocks
ing session of the ninth Global Soil Partnership (GSP) under various sustainable soil management and busi-
Plenary Assembly. ness-as-usual scenarios, as well as relative sequestra-
tion rates for each scenario.
As the decision-making body of the Global Soil Part-
nership (GSP), the GSP Plenary Assembly is where According to this map, soils - if managed sustainably -
strategic decisions to boost the global soil agenda are can sequester up to 0.56 petagrams of carbon --or 2.05
taken. The Sept. 8-10 virtual gathering was taking place gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent -- per year, having the
ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 in potential to offset yearly as much as 34 percent of agri-
Glasgow later this year. Other key speakers attending cultural global greenhouse gas emissions.
the meeting remotely due to the Covid-19 pandemic in-
The second product launched by FAO is a compen-
cluded Víctor Manuel Villalobos Arámbula, Secretary dium of good practices for farmers on how to maintain
for Agriculture and Rural Development of Mexico.
SOC stocks and how to sequester CO2. The result of
Practical tools for recarbonizing three years of collective effort by more than 400 spe-
global soils cialists from around the world, the six-volume technical
PDQXDO LV WKH ÞUVW DWWHPSW WR FROOHFW JRRG VRLO PDQDJH-
PHQW SUDFWLFHV VXSSRUWHG E\ VRXQG VFLHQWLÞF GDWD RQ
The degradation of one third of the world’s soils has
already released up to 78 gigatonnes of carbon into the the impacts of these practices on SOC content in a wide
array of environments and land uses.
atmosphere, so further damage to soil carbon stocks

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