National Implementation Case Study: China - Soil Carbon: Science, Management and Policy for Multiple Benefits - page 353

30 National Implementation
Case Study: China

Yongcun Zhao*

Abstract
As a developing country with limited arable land and a large population, governance of soil carbon in
China has to face a dual challenge, where both maintaining a steady increase in crop production for
ensuring adequate food supplies and addressing environmental problems raised by rapid industrial-
ization and agronomic development must be satisfied simultaneously. In this chapter, the possible ap-
proaches for soil carbon governance in China such as land management, agricultural management
practice, forestry activity and pasture management and recovery of degraded land are reviewed, and
the implementation of a soil testing and fertilizer recommendation project, a fertile soil project, con-
servation tillage and crop residue returning, as well as an ecological construction project for seques-
trating carbon in the soils of China is explored. Moreover, funding and technology limitation, notion
and knowledge gap and policy challenge are also discussed in the chapter.

Introduction

accounting for approximately 6% of global
SOC storage (1500-1550 Pg C; Jobbagy and
Jackson, 2000; Lal, 2004). As a developing
country with limited arable land and a large
population, however, rational governance
of soil carbon for China is extremely important,
because the dual challenge of maintaining a
steady increase in crop production for ensuring
adequate food supplies and addressing envir-
onmental problems raised by rapid industrial-
ization and agronomic development must be
satisfied simultaneously. This chapter reviews
the possible approaches for soil carbon gov-
ernance in China and the current national ac-
tion and policy for soil carbon governance,
and discusses the difficulties and challenges
for soil carbon sequestration in China.

The terrene environment is the most
important living space for humans, and soils
are at the core of terrestrial ecosystems. In ter-
restrial ecosystems, the soil carbon reservoir
is nearly three times as large as carbon stor-
age for vegetation and twice as large as atmos-
pheric carbon storage. In addition, a slight
change in soil carbon may affect the concen-
tration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,
amplifying global change. Therefore, govern-
ance of carbon in soils is extremely important
for mitigating global climate change.
So far, the most accurate estimate of
soil organic carbon (SOC) storage for China
is 89.14 Pg C (upper 1 m; Yu et al ., 2007),