The potential for enhanced soil carbon sequestration to mitigate climate change

Topics: Earth and Life Sciences
Type: Briefing paper
Publication date: January 2024

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Summary

Authors: Dr Bonnie G Waring

This briefing paper assesses the potential for soil carbon sequestration to mitigate climate change, summarising the basic science and providing an overview of best practices for measuring and modifying soil carbon stocks. We also set out recommendations for policy makers, examining UK land use policies as a case study.

Headlines

  • Since the world’s soils hold more than twice as much carbon as the atmosphere, protecting large but vulnerable stocks of soil carbon in permafrosts, peatlands, wetlands, and forests is critical to stabilising the climate.
  • Practices that enhance soil carbon sequestration could contribute to emission reduction targets, as well as delivering co-benefits for biodiversity and for people. However, these practices also face major ecological, technological, and socioeconomic constraints.
  • Currently, voluntary carbon markets are the main mechanism to incentivise agricultural management practices that are specifically aimed at enhancing soil carbon sequestration. However, there are significant challenges to the monitoring, reporting, and verification of soil carbon-based offsets, and it is difficult to ensure their additionality and permanence. 
  • The limited evidence also suggests that farmers may have reservations about participating in carbon markets, unless there is greater certainty around long-term revenue streams. Finally, the effectiveness of voluntary carbon markets in driving positive climate impacts will be limited unless site-specific changes in land use practices are considered within the broader context of a country’s land use policies.

View and download: The potential for enhanced soil carbon sequestration to mitigate climate change [PDF]