A new report from the United Nations Environment Programme, International Union for Conservation of Nature, World Food Programme, and FFAO-backed Save Soil warns that soil health — one of the world’s largest carbon sinks — remains largely absent from national climate plans ahead of COP30.
Titled “Solution Instead of Victim: Integrating Soil Health into Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) for Climate Change Mitigation”, the report’s key findings reveal that:
- Nations could offset up to 27% of the emissions needed to keep global warming below 2°C by scaling up regenerative agriculture (practices such as no-till farming, cover cropping, and agroforestry). By increasing soil health, we can significantly increase soils carbon sequestration potential
- The world’s soils hold 45% more carbon than previously estimated, making them one of Earth’s largest natural carbon sinks
- Revitalising soil health through regenerative practices can reduce fertiliser-related emissions by as much as 80% by 2050
- Just 1% of carbon contained in Europe’s soils alone would be equal to the annual emissions of 1 billion cars.
Yet despite this immense potential, in a first-of-its-kind analysis, the report outlines that the majority of countries (over 70%) do not feature soil as a mitigation tool in their National Determined Contributions (NDC) – a country’s climate action plan submitted under the Paris Agreement, which are due ahead of the COP30 climate conference in Belem, Brazil next week. To date, only 67 nations (out of a total of 197) have submitted their NDCs.
Praveena Sridhar, chief scientific and policy advisor of the Save Soil Movement, commented on the situation: “The world has a 45% larger-than-expected carbon bank right under its feet, yet our current climate mitigation plans largely fail to treat soil health as the powerful, cost-effective climate solution it is. We urge policymakers to immediately prioritise soil-relevant measures by requiring a compact soil-carbon annexe in NDC updates, and by designing blended-finance facilities that convert existing practice targets into verifiable carbon sequestration outcomes.”
