Soil Organic Carbon for Food Security and Climate

Deborah BossioLead Soil Scientist

Photo Neil Palmer, CIAT

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Why Soil Carbon?Soils contain two to three times more carbon than the atmosphere

Soil organic carbon has multiple benefits: food production, adaptation, resilience, water quality and climate mitigation

When combined with halting land use change emissions, potential to mitigate unmet burden of fossil fuel emissions (aspirational goal 3.5GtC annually)

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From 0.90 to 1.85 PgC/yr in top 30cm

25% to 50% of the 4p1000 target

Zomer, Bossio, Sommer, Verchot TNC

CIAT in prep

Soil Carbon Sequestration on Agricultural Lands How far can we go and where?

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Phot

o cr

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CIAT

How? Soil carbon sequestration with climate relevance is not business as usual

Conservation tillage

Agroforestry

Rangeland Manageme

nt

Agroecology

Organic Matter

Recycling

Sommer and Bossio, 2014

Caveats: What the timing of SOC sequestration might actually look like, phased implementation, the importance of permanence and monitoring

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Phased implementation of soil carbon enhancing practices, and eventual saturation of soil sequestration capacity

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