Global Action

The push to raise the profile of soil carbon is gaining momentum.

Governments around the world and not least from the developing world appreciate they have to find ways to increase food production and security while reducing or reversing the loss of carbon from their soils.

The discussions and debates to develop new strategies and approaches involve slow, incremental steps. Steps, that generally fail to attract the attention of the 24 hour news cycle. Perhaps not very sexy, but the groundswell of planning and strategizing emerging is potentially vital to the global warming debate. One key coalition of national governments, the global research alliance
www.globalresearchalliance.org. is quietly developing the ground rules for addressing the emerging development and food security issues. So they are creating the rules to develop the debate….

Fortunately, soil carbon sequestration has to date remained on the agenda of at least one of the three main research strategies, in this case the livestock research group.

“There are opportunities to reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and increase carbon sequestration while still helping meet food security objectives. “

Copied from the homepage of the global research alliance.

Complementing the long term slow change model other groups and entities engaged in the discussion are more short term results oriented. With a focus on practical solutions Carbon Farmers of America’s Abe Collins is exploring ideas from prize grants to carbon credits sales. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0F5VEqXq4g&feature=related.

Others are developing the measurement tools and technologies to demonstrate the effect of carbon sequestration.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pOBTogB5xI&NR=1.

Opinion leaders, the media as well as politicians and industry have been slow to recognize the potential of topsoil creation to absolutely reduce atmospheric carbon levels. However, this awareness is growing. The climate change debate is moving beyond simply reducing emissions to some new lower rate of increase to a more sophisticated discussion of strategies to reduce atmospheric carbon levels.

At the moment the debate appears to be at that vital tipping point where the opposition to change melts away.