Crediting soil carbon sequestration in smallholder agricultural systems: what fits and what will fly?

Abstract

Increasing the organic carbon content in soils is beneficial for agricultural production and is also a means of capturing and storing atmospheric CO2 in soils and mitigating climate change. A global effort to improve soil quality on farms has the potential to generate significant increases in both food security and climate change mitigation, given the potential number of poor farmers and land areas that could benefit. Improving farmer?s management of soils for improving agricultural productivity has long been an objective of agricultural development strategies. Soil carbon sequestration has been identified by the IPCC as the largest potential source of climate change mitigation from the agricultural sector, and its inclusion in climate change policy frameworks has been debated for some time. Recognition of the potential for linking mitigation and food security objectives in policy and financing frameworks has recently been highlighted. Yet despite this enduring and multi-faceted policy interest, there has been only limited success attained in actually improving on farm soil quality, and even less in linking climate change mitigation finance to soil carbon sequestration. This paper seeks to explore the reasons for these failures, and suggest ways in which the joint food security and mitigation benefits from a global effort to improve soil quality may be captured