Reply to Loisel et al.: Soil in climate mitigation and adaptation

Amundson, R.; Biardeau, Léopold

doi:10.1073/pnas.1905360116

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…The associated agricultural practices are broadly referred to as "regenerative" or "conservation" agriculture. The economic feasibility of this approach, as well as the extent to which it could remove enough carbon from the atmosphere to have an effect on climate change in the long run, have been the object of intense debates among soil researchers in the last few years (e.g., Powlson et al, 2011;White & Davidson, 2016a, 2016bSanderman et al, 2017;van Groenigen et al, 2017;Rumpel et al, 2018;Amundson & Biardeau, 2018a, 2018bPoulton et al, 2018;Baveye, Berthelin, et al, 2018;Loisel et al, 2019;Baveye et al, 2020;Amelung et al, 2020;Ranganathan et al, 2020).…”

Section: Highlightsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soil carbon sequestration for climate change mitigation: Mineralization kinetics of organic inputs as an overlooked limitation

Berthelin¹,

Laba

Lemaire³

et al. 2022

European J Soil Science

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Over the last few years, the question of whether soil carbon sequestration could contribute significantly to climate change mitigation has been the object of numerous debates. All of these debates so far appear to have entirely overlooked a crucial aspect of the question. It concerns the short-term mineralization kinetics of fresh organic matter added to soils, which is occasionally alluded to in the literature, but is almost always subsumed in a broader modelling context. In the present article, we first summarise what is currently known about the kinetics of mineralization of plant residues added to soils, and about its modelling in the long run. We then argue that in the short run, this microbially-mediated process has important practical consequences that cannot be ignored. Specifically, since at least 90% of plant residues added to soils to increase their carbon content over the long term are mineralized relatively rapidly and are released as CO 2 to the atmosphere, farmers would have to apply to their fields 10 times more organic carbon annually than what they would eventually expect to sequester. Over time, because of a well-known sink saturation effect, the multiplier may even rise significantly above 10, up to a point when no net carbon sequestration takes place any longer.

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Section: Highlightsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soil carbon sequestration for climate change mitigation: Mineralization kinetics of organic inputs as an overlooked limitation

Berthelin¹,

Laba

Lemaire³

et al. 2022

European J Soil Science

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Carbon policy for the United States, China and Nigeria: An estimated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model

Shobande

Shodipe

2019

Science of The Total Environment

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Countries’ commitments to soil organic carbon in Nationally Determined Contributions

Wiese¹,

Wollenberg

Alcántara-Shivapatham

et al. 2021

Climate Policy

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Soil carbon is the major active pool of terrestrial carbon, and as such, soil organic carbon (SOC) targets, policies and measures will be pivotal to achieving global climate targets. SOC sequestration may reduce the net annual greenhouse gas emissions from Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use by between 3% and 71%, while simultaneously supporting various ecosystem services. Accurate SOC accounting and monitoring, however, is constrained by various technical challenges related to indicators, rates of SOC change, measuring the impact of management practices on SOC, and the long-term persistence of sequestered SOC. We assessed countries' pledges to the Paris Agreement for SOC in agriculture to better understand the level, transparency, and specificity of commitments. Reviewing 184 countries' initial Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), we considered whether SOC was included, what was pledged, the level of ambition promised and the specificity of mitigation targets. Twenty-eight countries referred to SOC in their NDCs, citing quantified or unquantified mitigation targets, national policies or programs, and actions and measures to be implemented in agricultural lands ( 14), peatlands (6) or wetlands (14). Countries' reasons for not including SOC in NDCs included the need to prioritize goals of sustainable development and food security above climate mitigation, a lack of incentives for farmers to improve management practices, and the difficulty of accurately monitoring changes in SOC. Including SOC targets in NDCs can improve NDCs' comprehensiveness and transparency to track and compare policy progress across NDCs; it can also leverage SOC-related climate finance, technical support, and capacity building. Key policy insights:1. Many NDCs specify practices known to have the potential to achieve SOC sequestration or protection without explicitly mentioning SOC. The SOC-related mitigation potential of these practices can be quantified in future NDCs. 2. NDCs are not presently a good indicator of countries' interest or commitment to SOC action at national level. To improve this, countries with existing SOC policies, programs, and actions can specify their SOC-related commitments in future NDCs. 3. Increased collaboration between countries with experience managing SOC and countries needing support to develop SOC-related targets, policies, measures and incentives for land users and farmers would facilitate the provision of such needed support.

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Reply to Loisel et al.: Soil in climate mitigation and adaptation

Cited by 4 publications

References 10 publications

Soil carbon sequestration for climate change mitigation: Mineralization kinetics of organic inputs as an overlooked limitation

Soil carbon sequestration for climate change mitigation: Mineralization kinetics of organic inputs as an overlooked limitation

Carbon policy for the United States, China and Nigeria: An estimated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model

Countries’ commitments to soil organic carbon in Nationally Determined Contributions

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