Policy Frameworks - Soil Carbon: Science, Management and Policy for Multiple Benefits - page 348

such as climate change, energy, transport,
industry, raw materials, agriculture, fisher-
ies, biodiversity and regional development.
The soil and land related milestone indi-
cates that by 2020 EU policies must take
into account their direct and indirect im-
pact on land use in the EU and globally and
that the rate of land take is on track with the
aim to achieve zero net land take by 2050,
soil erosion is reduced and soil organic mat-
ter increased, with remedial work on con-
taminated sites well under way (EC, 2011a).

tent (0-2%), and 45% have a medium
content ( 2- 6%) (Rusco et al ., 2001).
The problem exists in particular in the
southern countries of Europe, where
74% of the land is covered by soils that
have less than 2% of OC in the topsoil
(0-30 cm) (Zdruli et al ., 2004). However,
low levels of OM are not restricted to
southern Europe, as they are also ob-
served in France, the UK, Germany,
Norway and Belgium.
• Thereisgrowingrealizationoftherole
of soil, in particular peat, as a store of C
and its role in managing terrestrial
fluxes of atmospheric CO 2 .
• Otherthanintropicalecosystems,soil
contains about twice as much OC as
aboveground vegetation. SOC stocks in
the EU- 27 are estimated to be around
75 billion t, of which about 50% is in
Sweden, Finland and the UK because
of their large areas of peatlands and for-
est soils (EC, 2008b).
• Peatsoilsrepresentthehighestconcen-
tration of organic matter in all soils.
Peatlands are currently under threat
from unsustainable practices such as
drainage, clearance for agriculture, fires
and extraction.

The European environment - state
and outlook 2010 (EEA, 2010)

In 2010, the European Environment Agency
(EEA) published a report on the state of the
European Environment, outlining the influ-
ence of climate on European land. As regards
the EU- 27 and other industrialized countries,
the EEA declared that GHG emission cuts of
25- 40% by 2020 and 80- 95% by 2050 were
needed. The main sources of GHG emissions
globally are the burning of fossil fuels for
electricity generation, transport, industry and
households - which together account for
about two-thirds of total global emissions.
Other sources include deforestation - which
contributes about one-fifth - agriculture,
land-filling of waste and the use of industrial
fluorinated gases. The projected impacts of
climate change are expected to vary consider-
ably across Europe, with pronounced events
expected in the Mediterranean basin, north-
western Europe, the Arctic and mountainous
regions. Regarding soil ecosystems, informa-
tion on the impacts of climate change is very
limited, but changes will likely be due to pro-
jected rising temperatures, changing precipi-
tation intensity and frequency and more se-
vere droughts. Such changes can lead to a
decline in SOM content and an increase in
CO 2 emissions (EEA, 2010).
The main messages from the EEA 2010
State of Environment Report concerning
SOC were:

The European peatlands are estimated to
cover about 52 Mha (Joosten and Clarke,
2002; Joosten, 2009), of which about 31
Mha occur in the northern latitudes (EC,
2008b). The total C storage of European
peatlands is estimated at 42 billion t, ac-
counting for 10- 15% of the C stock in nor-
thern peatlands and about 20% of the Euro-
pean SOC stock (Aertsens et al ., 2013).
Almost one-third of European peatlands are
in Finland, and more than one-quarter are in
Sweden. The remainder are in Poland, the
UK, Norway, Germany, Ireland, Estonia, Lat-
via, the Netherlands and France. Small areas
of peat and peat-topped soils also occur in
Lithuania, Hungary, Denmark and the Czech
Republic (Montanarella et al ., 2006). There
has been an estimated loss of 50% of wet-
lands globally since 1900, due mainly to
intensive management (EEA, 2010). There
is no harmonized exhaustive inventory of
peat stocks in Europe; for example, in the

• State of soil organic carbon levels:
around 45% of the mineral soils in
Europe have low or very low OC con-