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| Jaggi Vasudev, known by the honorific title Sadhguru, an Indian yoga guru |
There is a rapidly accelerating global call to protect ecosystems, and while biodiversity and nature are part of the overall conversation, less attention has been paid to soil health. But there is no way to talk about climate change, biodiversity or food security without referring to soil degradation. Sadhguru, head of the Isha Foundation, is running a campaign, Conscious Planet – Save our Soil, to change that.
For three decades global yogi Sadhguru has been raising the importance of soil and the alarming threat of soil extinction into the spotlight and says: "Soil is our life, our very body. And if we forsake soil, in many ways, we forsake the planet."
Soil lies at the heart of ecosystem health, providing essential services not just for agricultural production but also for plant growth, animal habitation, biodiversity, carbon sequestration and resilience to droughts or flooding. The decline in soil health is exacerbating many of the most severe challenges from climate change to global hunger.
To give just a couple of examples, poor soil health is contributing to global warming by reducing the volume of carbon absorbed from the atmosphere and driving biodiversity loss by impacting vegetation that provides food and shelter to various animal species.
The goals of the Sadhguru campaign are simple, if ambitious. They involve raising awareness of the importance of soil, inspiring the electorate to support policy around soil health (the goal is 4 billion people or 60% of the world’s electorate) and, in particular, helping to raise and maintain the organic content of soils to a minimum of 3-6%.
Research published in 2020 suggests that around 24 billion metric tons of fertile soils are being lost each year and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification has warned that up to 40% of the global land area is already in a degraded state. This is down in part to a changing climate but human activity has a significant role to play, with intensive farming, excessive use of chemical inputs, deforestation and other forms of land-use conversion contributing to the problem.
This has a direct economic impact as well as environmental one. The European Commission recently estimated that Europe loses nine million tonnes of soil annually, while in 2019 Solar Energy UK’s analysis of natural capital value suggested that soil degradation costs the UK alone around £1.2 billion per year.
Food, agriculture and the soil
For the agricultural sector, declining soil fertility raises a number of issues. It reduces both the yields and quality of growing crops, eating into farmers’ profits as well as their ability to produce enough food for the growing population.
Indeed, estimates suggest that around 95% of the food we consume is directly or indirectly dependent on healthy soils, but approximately 52% of the world’s agricultural land has already been degraded.
About 51 million square kilometers of land, which amounts to 70% of the land on the planet, is under agriculture right now. Sadhguru says: "Right now, the United Nations is saying that the world may have agricultural soil only for another 80–100 crops. This means after 45–60 years, there could be severe food shortages, and getting rich soil will become the basis of wars on this planet. And every responsible scientist in the world is pointing out that by 2045, we will be producing 40% less food than what we are producing right now and our populations will be well over 9 billion.
"That is not a world you want to live in or leave for your children and go. But that is what we are creating. In every agricultural land on the planet, a minimum 3–6% of organic matter must be there. If you institute this in the policy of every nation, in 12–15 years’ time, we can significantly mitigate climate change just by attending to the soil.”
Restoration and regeneration of soil can be done in combination with industry too, as for example through agri-solar, with growing interest in the impact of deploying solar PV alongside both crops and animal agriculture. Mark Rowcroft, development director at Exagen, which is promoting the combination of solar PV generation with agriculture wrote: “Land regeneration is as vital to securing a low-carbon future as decarbonising our energy systems. Protecting and nurturing biodiversity has the double impact of restoring soil quality to sequester carbon and improve soil quality and farming yields.”
Soil as a carbon sink
Soil is a significant carbon sink - globally, approximately 75% of terrestrial carbon has been estimated to be stored in soil, which is up to is three times more than the amount stored in living plants and animals.
If the soil is covered and has humus (organic matter), it absorbs the carbon from the atmosphere. At the same time, unhealthy soil, which is ploughed and exposed, is a source of emissions of both carbon dioxide and methane. That means that improving the health of soil can play a major role in increasing carbon sequestration and addressing atmospheric carbon.
Whether you want to fix or reverse climate change, or do carbon sequestration, or limit the temperatures rising in the world, or resolve water scarcity, the connecting need is the need to fix the soil. As Sadhguru points out: “It is also the largest water soak on the planet. If soil is organically rich, we can store eight times more water than all the rivers on the planet put together!” That can have a significant impact on local resilience to drought and/or floods.
Healthy soil underpins many of the approaches that we are taking to address climate change and food challenges. Healthy soil is home to the mycelium that connects plants and trees helps them share nutrients, exchange nitrogen, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, etc. That then helps to keep forests healthy, a goal which is expected to play a critical part in attempts to mitigate and adapt to the challenge of climate change.
Driving finance for soil regeneration
One of the ways in which finance can be funnelled towards soil regeneration is through the voluntary carbon markets. Verra’s methodology for Improved Agriculture Land Management (IALM) for example – which was recently updated – allows farmers to deliver important climate mitigation benefits while improving their incomes and on-farm resilience.
The IALM methodology, which is linked to Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), enables carbon financing at scale for projects that remove agriculture greenhouse gasses (GHGs) in numerous ways – including improved fertilizer management, improved water management/irrigation, reduced tillage or improved residue management, improved crop planting and harvesting (e.g., improved agroforestry and crop rotations) or improved grazing practices. Once projects applying the IALM methodology have been verified and validated, farmers are able to gain Verified Carbon Units (VCUs), i.e., carbon credits.
A spokesperson for carbon standard and certification body Verra says: “When improved agricultural land management (IALM) practices are implemented that focus on enriching the soil, it enhances both its role as a carbon sink, allowing it to absorb greenhouse gas emissions instead of releasing them, and wider ecosystem resilience. This resilience helps protect communities against the impacts of climate change-induced extreme weather, such as flooding and drought, with knock-on benefits for food security and health.”
By advancing global efforts to restore soil health and implement more sustainable farming practices in the future, the agricultural industry could play a key role in solving the interconnected crises of food security, climate change and biodiversity loss.
Challenges and opportunities
As the recognition of the importance of soil health – for climate mitigation, biodiversity, and the health of the environment as a whole – has grown, so too has the number of initiatives and campaigns dedicated to raising awareness of this topic. Alongside the French initiative 4 per 1,000, other examples include the Global Soil Partnership and the Coalition of Action for Soil Health.
Innovative methods to direct investment towards enhancing soil health are much-needed, and there are an increasing number of options available for farmers to access additional revenue streams for improving soil health, which is becoming ever-more possible with technological and scientific advancements in monitoring and reporting on soil organic carbon (SOC).
There are challenges as well though. As Aadith Moorthy chief executive of soil carbon marketplace Boomitra points out, the understanding of the role of soil carbon is not as established as forestry, which plays a central role in today’s carbon markets.
More importantly, its not really understood by financiers which means it is seen as a high-risk investment. If this challenge can be overcome though, there are funds in the voluntary carbon markets that might well be able to direct significant financial flows.
Sadhguru says: “Soil degradation is a global scale disaster, but it can be turned around simply with a committed focus. It does not need any absolutely new technology or trillions of dollars. What it needs is a committed approach from the governments.”
To achieve the minimum 3-6% organic matter, Sadhguru believes we need a three-pronged strategy. Firstly, the governments of the world need to incentivize farmers to raise the organic matter in their soil. Secondly, the carbon credit market needs to be simplified so that it is accessible for the farmers. The third part of the strategy calls for market recognition and valuation of the produce as per the organic matter of the soil which it comes from.
There are other opportunities too – robotics, soil monitoring and measurement are sectors in which investors are showing increasing interest – and the potential for transforming agriculture is immense. Sadhguru says that industries and businesses should focus on evolving fertilizers, pesticides, and farm machinery that are more soil friendly, saying: “Today there is enough technology – robotics, artificial intelligence - to transform these things. The science is already there; we know what to do. It is just that the industry has not caught up with it yet.”
Soil and climate action
Given that nearly 40% of climate change is affected by soil, it may seem odd that the topic has not yet become part of the wider climate conversation and indeed, the climate negotiations. Moorthy points out that to date only fourteen NDCs have included soil health in one form or another.
Sadghuru says: “If you fix this one thing, everything will be fixed naturally. Whether you want to fix or reverse climate change, or do carbon sequestration, or limit the temperatures rising in the world, or resolve water scarcity, we need to fix the soil.” So maybe that’s where the focus should be at the next COP.
Fonte: Forbes
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