Agriculture Advantage 2.0 at COP24 | Soils advantage: Transforming agriculture by recarbonizing the Earth’s soil
Will soil be the silver bullet to meet food security and climate change goals? This event will present the latest scientific evidence and discuss business cases for soil carbon enhancement.
Objective
To mobilize a coalition of actors and funding to scale out actions to enhance soil carbon stocks and progress towards meeting food security and climate change goals.
Please note the time of this event has changed to:
18:30-20:00 PM
The date and room remain the same. Details below.
Overview
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on limiting warming to 1.5 degrees celsius calls for large-scale transformations of the global energy-agriculture-land-economy system. The report warns that failure to limit warming may affect agriculture in ways that make achieving the 2nd Sustainable Development Goal of ending hunger impossible and it has the potential to reverse the gains of the past decades. The report makes a strong case for carbon dioxide removals, and sequestration of carbon in soils is an important option with positive co-benefits for soil fertility, productivity, and water and nutrient retention. These improvements make for more resilient agroecosystems and will help farmers deal with increasing inter-annual climate variability.
However, while land use issues represent 25% of the climate change problem, and natural climate solutions, including those based on increasing soil carbon content represent more than 30% of the solution. Today, this is only 1% of the climate conversation. This needs to change, and efforts are needed to scale investment to put carbon back into soil and prevent soil carbon loss.
Efforts are ongoing to scale up actions, for example, the 4 per 1000 Initiative on Soils for Food Security and Climate (4p1000) a platform for knowledge and experience sharing among different stakeholders, enables partners to implement practical actions on soil carbon storage adapted to local context. Such efforts need to be complemented with policy support and incentives for farmer led actions. This event seeks to close the information gap on soil carbon for farmers, policy makers, businesses and investors, to enable implementation at scale and to help meet food security and climate change goals.
Tentative program
Speaker | Agenda | Duration |
Lini Wollenberg, Flagship Leader – Low Emissions Development, CCAFS | Welcome and introductions | 10 mins |
Louis Verchot, Director, Soils Research Area, CIAT/WLE | Keynote presentation: The soils advantage for transforming agriculture | 10 mins |
Short presentations of opportunities and challenges in realising the potential from different stakeholder groups | ||
Paul Luu, Executive Secretary, 4p1000 | The “4 per 1000” Initiative, 3 years after COP 21 : Hopes and challenges | 8 mins |
Dalma Somogyi, Manager – CSA, WBCSD | The business case for investment in soils - catalyzing action from the private sector | 8 mins |
Majola Mabuza, Programme Officer - Policy, SACAU | Increasing soil organic carbon – what is the value proposition for farmers? | 8 mins |
Lucy Ng’ang’a, Ministry of Agriculture, Kenya | Soil carbon policies: The missing link | 8 mins |
Moderated Q&A and discussion Moderator: Viridiana Alcantara Cervantes, Technical Advisor, Federal Office for Agriculture and Food, Germany | 30 mins | |
Lini Wollenberg, Flagship Leader – Low Emissions Development, CCAFS | Closing remarks | 10 mins |
This event is part of the Agriculture Advantage 2.0 event series at COP24, a collaborative effort of more than 15 organizations with the mission to transform agricultural development in the face of climate change. Click here to see the series of events at COP24.
Related resources:
- CCAFS briefing: A 6-part action plan to transform food systems under climate change, available in 2 formats: Exposure story with animated graphics | downloadable Info Note
- CCAFS blog: Soil organic carbon: a call to action on World Soil Day
- CCAFS journal article: Cost-effective opportunities for climate change mitigation in Indian agriculture
- CCAFS Info Note: Decision support for agricultural soil carbon sequestration: Multi-lateral development banks’ needs and challenges
- 4p1000 commentary in journal Nature: Put more carbon in soils to meet Paris pledges
- WBCSD report: The Business Case for Investing in Soil Health
- CIAT-WLE journal article: Global sequestration potential of increased organic carbon in cropland soils
Find out what happened at the event:
- Summary blog: Soils Advantage: Scaling up action on soil carbon
- Web recording (click "Join the event" to watch)