Recruiting Soil to Tackle Climate Change: A Roadmap for Canada

Recruiting Soil to Tackle Climate Change: A Roadmap for Canada

The world’s soils have lost an estimated 133 billion tons of carbon since the beginning of agriculture 12,000 years ago. This loss represents a substantial opportunity for climate-change mitigation via carbon sequestration in soils.

The challenges to building soil carbon, however, include socio-economic, political, and cultural barriers. Healthy soil microbial communities build carbon, while also generating societal benefits like clean water, but managing for soil health means adopting best-management practices (BMPs) that often run counter to perceived economic advantage and long-established cultural norms.

The world’s soils have lost an estimated 133 billion tons of carbon since the beginning of agriculture 12,000 years ago. This loss represents a substantial opportunity for climate-change mitigation via carbon sequestration in soils.

Soil-carbon sequestration is a “no regrets” approach, applying landscape-based solutions to climate change. It can be implemented at a relatively low cost per tonne of CO_2e, and it has numerous co-benefits, such as increased fertility, cleaner water, and greater farm profitability. Moreover, the science behind these statements is not disputed. While there is some disagreement between scientists around the details, even the most conservative among researchers and academics recognize that the potential for building soil carbon levels is real and worth the investment. In fact, soil health is a topic that has been receiving a growing amount of attention worldwide over the past few years [Note: Soil health and soil carbon, while not exactly synonymous terms, are close enough in general meaning that for our purposes here, the promotion of one can be considered to also be the promotion of the other].

The Soil Conservation Council of Canada and the Compost Council of Canada proudly announced the final report of this project on April 5, 2022.

The overall goal of this project is to help more people put carbon into soil and keep it there.  With the support of the Metcalf foundation The Soil conservation Council of Canada and the Compost Council of Canada collaborated on building Recruiting Soil to Tackle Climate Change: A Roadmap for Canada.  Specifically this project will:

1.  Develop a Roadmap to provide Canadian stakeholders (including the federal and provincial governments) with an overview of current work in this area, set out main barriers and opportunities to enhance soil carbon in Canada. It will provide a base of information to support informed decision making going forward.
2. Gather Commitments by stakeholders that demonstrate their actions to enhance soil carbon.
3. A set of Recommendations on targets, timelines, and roles and responsibilities.