FAO debuts world soil database to identify carbon sink, biomass cultivation opportunities

July 22, 2008

In Italy, the FAO announced a new Harmonized World Soil Database that would improve knowledge of current and future land productivity as well as the present carbon storage and carbon sequestration potential of the world’s soils. Derived from the soil database, FAO said it has produced a global Carbon Gap Map that allows for the identification of areas where soil carbon storage is greatest and the physical potential for billions of tons of additional carbon to be sequestrated in degraded soils.

The world’s soils hold more organic carbon (1500 Gt) than the atmosphere that contains about half this amount as CO2 (720 metric tons), and the vegetation (600 metric tons) combined. The HWSD provides improved soil information worldwide particularly needed in the context of the Climate Change Convention and post Kyoto Protocol instruments for soil carbon measurements and carbon trading. The database and viewer are available for download here.

FAO background

In Rome, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization said that they are proceeding with planning the Global Forest Resources Assessment, scheduled for 201, which will use remote sensing to create a baseline of data on deforestation, afforestation, and natural forest expansion since 1990.

The project will establish a framework and methodology for monitoring forest resources and rates of change, as well as provide a gateway for access to imagery as well as a reporting and analytic mechanism for countries to assess their own forest and land-use change status.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization said that World Food Day, celebrated on October 16th this year, would have a theme of “World Food Security: the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy”. The FAO will hold special events throughout the week of October 14th, including symposia, roundtable discussions, concerts and a meeting of the Committee on World Food Security.

At the UN Food Summit in Rome, “Everyone complained about other people’s protectionism — and defended their own,” according to the New York Times. The emergency gathering of world leaders teetered on the brink of farce as Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe hectored listeners with an anti-colonialist outburst and the president of Iran, “talked about the need to inject religion into food politics” in the Times’ memorable take. It became obvious to observers by the end of Wednesday’s sessions that progress on Secretary-General Ban-KI Moon’s $30 billion food shortage target would be minimal. The roughest treatment for biofuels was handed out by Brazilian President Inacio Lula Da Silva, who pillories US corn ethanol in an address defending the sugarcane ethanol industry.

In France, the OECD and FAO published a new Agricultural Outlook. The report forecasts an increase in global ethanol production to 33 billion gallons by 2017, up 100 percent from 2007, with prices averaging $2.07 per gallon in 2009. Biodiesel production was projected to reach 6 billion gallons in 2017, up from 3 billion in 2007.

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Written by Jim Lane · Filed Under Research