by David Masters
March 13, 2009
Poor soil management could make climate change worse than it already is, a new European Commission report has warned.
Soils across Europe are a massive carbon reservoir, the report said, holding between 73 and 79 billion tonnes of carbon.
Around half of this carbon is stored in the peat bogs of Sweden, Finland, Britain and Ireland.
Just 0.1% of this carbon released into the atmosphere through poor soil management would be equivalent to an extra 100 million cars on the road – 50% of the vehicles in Europe.
The best way to ensure the carbon stays in the soil – and that soil captures as much extra carbon is possible – is to protect and manage the soil, the report said.
Carbon is lost from soil when native ecosystems are destroyed to be replaced by cropland.
Soils under natural ecosystems such as grassland and forests are the most effective at accumulating carbon, sequestering up to 100 million tonnes of carbon per year.
Stavros Dimas, environment commissioner, said: “Properly managed soils can absorb enormous quantities of carbon from the atmosphere, buying us valuable time to reduce emissions and move towards sustainability.”
However, he added: “Europe’s soils urgently need better protection, and the answer must be a coordinated solution.”
Better soil management means a lot for Kenya. According to a recently released report–Kenya: Atlas of Our Changing Environment (2009)–the value of soil lost due to erosion each year is anywhere between US$2.4 and US$3.3 billion. There are no estimates of C released to the atmosphere due to such loss but a critical assessment would easily run into several hundreds if not thousands of MT CO2-equivalent per year. Clearly, this is an issue and African soils urgently need better protection. The fifteenth Conference of Parties in Copenhagen should seriously consider including soils, an important carbon sink, in a post-2012 agreement.