On the need to center climate smart soil management: a win-win strategy for climate change mitigation and ensuring food security

Abstract:

Climate change and food security are connected in many ways, and both are underlain by soil. Close to 1 billion people globally lack food and nutritional security, but the soil resource that is needed to produce food is getting degraded by human action. In the context of food security, climate change is a threat multiplier, meaning human-caused climate change is exacerbating the existing threat of food and nutritional insecurity globally. Increased temperatures, higher frequency of droughts and other weather phenomena related to climate change are causing land degradation and reduction in yields of major crops, increased food prices and a decrease in the income of food growers. Climate smart soil management practice that focus on improving soil health can also contribute to reversing the increasing concentrations of greenhouses in the atmosphere. This presentation will include discussion on fundamental mechanisms by which soil system controls the earth’s climate, and potential of different land management practices to bend the curve of increasing concentrations of greenhouses gases in the atmosphere.