Avoided Land Degradation and Enhanced Soil Carbon Storage: Is There a Role for Carbon Markets? - Soil Carbon: Science, Management and Policy for Multiple Benefits - page 360

31 Avoided Land Degradation
and Enhanced Soil Carbon
Storage: Is There a Role
for Carbon Markets?

Meine van Noordwijk*

Abstract
Avoidance of depletion of soil organic matter as part of land degradation and enhanced restoration in
depleted soils are of direct importance to agriculture, ranching, forestry and other land uses, but are also
a relevant part of national C accounting and the global C cycle. 'Carbon markets' imply economic, per-
formance-based incentives that relate global climate and greenhouse gas concerns, via national commit-
ments to reduce overall CO 2 emissions, to incentives at the level of land users to increase net C storage.
We focus on three groups of questions:
1. What is the value chain involved? Can soil C be separated from aboveground land-use effects?
2. Are market-based solutions feasible? What can we learn from the pilots?
3. Will the prices be worth it for land managers once transaction costs are accounted for? Are there
better ways to provide effective performance-based incentives from the public perspective?

We conclude that a combination of the commodification, compensation and co-investment versions of
the broader payments or rewards for environmental services (ES) debate is probably needed to achieve
the effects desired at both ends of the carbon value chain. Commodification, the purest market-based
paradigm, by itself remains controversial and can be counterproductive. Synergy between private and
public sectors is needed to make progress, while the primary attention will have to remain with the
primary sources of anthropogenic carbon emissions.

Introduction

in support of agricultural production sys-
tems that minimize environmental impacts
per unit harvested product. Yet, in the short-
term, agricultural practices that deplete
SOM, for example through intensive tillage,
utilization of all crop residues, drainage of
wetland and peat soils, may appear to be
profitable with the current prices of agricul-
tural inputs and outputs and in the absence
of a direct market valuation of soil carbon

The preceding chapters have established
the many functions that soil organic matter
(SOM) plays in soil health (Chapter 14, this
volume), buffering of water and nutrient
supply to plants (Chapters 7 and 12, this
volume), soil aggregation and infiltration
(Chapters 8 and 22, this volume), filtering of
contaminants (Chapter 8, this volume) and