Austria: Africa: Soil Project Seeks to Soak Up Excess Carbon

France is leading a worldwide push to increase the all of carbon locked in soils through better farming practices.

Supporters of an initiative launched at the COP 21 summit say this would limit world warming by removing carbon from the atmosphere, while as well increasing the range and all of food farmers produce by improving soil fertility. This would particularly benefit developing nations, according to representatives of the 4 Pour 1000 initiative.

"It's a bit of a scientific dream, but we have a lot of evidence that supports this dream," Jean-Paul Moatti, the chief executive officer of the French Research Institute for Development, one of the organisations behind the plan, said yesterday on the sidelines of the talks in Paris, France.

Increasing carbon stocks in the top 40 centimetres of soil by four parts per 1,000 (0.4 %) each year would compensate for carbon emissions from human activity, the project description says, provided deforestation is halted.

To achieve this, the plan suggests five practices: not leaving the soil bare, to curb carbon losses from erosion; restoring degraded land; planting trees and growing legumes that increase levels of the plant nutrient nitrogen in the soil; feeding soil with manure; and conserving water at the base of plants to boost their increase.

Dennis Garrity, a dryland ambassador for the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, said the plan could transform agriculture in the same way that renewable energy advances help change energy systems.

Farmers are by presently trying to introduce new practices, said Edwin Castellanos, director of the centre of environmental studies at the Universidad del Valle in Guatemala. "The large challenge lies with small farmers" who lack the access to finance and technological support that large businesses have, he told the event.

In Guatemala, attempts to charge consumers a premium for coffee grown on additional environmentally friendly fields has only had "limited success", Castellanos explained. The problem is that farming must remain commercially competitive, he said.

The 4 Pour 1000 proposition consists of a voluntary action plan and research programme. The programme does not from presently on come with a budget or timeline, but Moatti told SciDev.Net he was confident it would fasten funding from international sources such as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change's Green Climate Fund.

But a group of humanitarian and development NGOs called Coordination SUD have raised concerns about the type of funds that may be used to finance the initiative. It fears that without proper oversight, the use of private sector funds could lead to land grabbing.

Partners in 4 Pour 1000 include research organisations, the governments of Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Morocco and Uruguay, the World Bank and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, inclunding businesses and NGOs.