A Strategy for Taking Soil Carbon into the Policy Arena - Soil Carbon: Science, Management and Policy for Multiple Benefits - page 67

agenda for a celebration of a soil day 3 /year
could accelerate all previous recommenda-
tions. The FAO has submitted two resolu-
tions to the United Nations General Assembly
for the celebration of World Soil Day on 5
December and an International Year of Soil
in 2015. These will be two key awareness-
raising platforms and events. Concerning
drylands, the French Scientific Committee
on Desertification published at the end of
2013 a thematic study entitled 'Carbon in
dryland soils - multiple essential functions'
showing the multiple functions benefiting
societies and the environment in drylands
(Bernoux and Chevallier, 2013).

direct income, such as using the residues
for energy consumption for the long-term
effect of the same residues that, when left
on the field, may slowly increase SOC. The
latter may produce a benefit for society, for
instance in terms of reducing C emissions
(Chapter 15, this volume). The second eco-
nomic parameter concerns the externalities
that can be either positive (e.g. no-till de-
signed for C sequestration also protects the
soil against erosion) or negative (e.g. no-till
induces an increase in pesticide use). Fi-
nally, the willingness to pay for goods and
services that flow from SOC are discussed
in Chapter 15 of this volume.

Local scale

Policy rationale

The main concern of farmers and land man-
agers is to ensure a secure and sufficient
income. If they have secure land tenure
rights, they will also be concerned about
maintaining a value of the soil capital for fu-
ture generations. Unfortunately, in the cur-
rent economic environment, the value of the
soil capital is secondary to the value of the
services that the soil, and more specifically
the SOC, can provide (i.e. the externalities).
In order to benefit from these services, some
choices have to be made incurring costs
(e.g. increase in SOC will require biomass
input that cannot be fed to cattle). These
choices lead to opportunity costs. The man-
agement of SOC has an (long-term) impact
on soil quality through improving soil ag-
gregate stability, water-holding capacity and
reducing vulnerability to erosion (Govers et al .,
2013). Furthermore, SOC has an influence
on soil fertility through the nutrients (mainly
N and P) that it contains. In most intensive
agricultural systems, these nutrients are
supplied in chemical fertilizers, and hence
evidence of direct relationships between
SOC additions and yield increases are rare.
Several authors mention that the variability
in yields decreases by a two-way interaction
between SOC stocks and crop productivity
(overview in Govers et al ., 2013). van Noordwijk
et al . (1997) argue that nutrient supply, nu-
trient buffering, water regulation, mainten-
ance of soil structure and other functions
such as pest control can, in principle, be

On the one hand, the land containing the
soil is in most cases private property and
can thus be traded by its owners. On the
other hand, soil functions deliver the eco-
nomic and social benefits of the SOC capital
to society as a whole and therefore need to
be considered as public goods. As SOC is
part of a natural resource, it cannot be
traded directly on international markets;
nor are the social effects of the SOC capital
immediately visible (Chapter 15, this vol-
ume), although changes in the SOC capital
can be traded on the emissions markets,
as an increase in SOC can be considered to
represent a sink of atmospheric CO 2 . Currently,
only voluntary markets for CO 2 trading exist,
and prices are well below US$5 Mg - 1 C
( Lipper et al ., 2010). Clearly, such trading
considers only a part of the services that
flow from SOC and by no means considers
the value of soil as a natural capital.
In addition to the long-term effect of a
decrease in SOC and its consequences for
future generations, the economic and social
benefits and costs flowing from the use of
the SOC capital are discussed. First, the op-
portunity costs of increasing/maintaining
SOC levels refer to examples of the impact
of returning biomass to the soil and how
this affects food sources for cattle (Antle and
Stoorvogel, 2003). In other words, farmers,
who tend to maximize income are often re-
luctant to compromise a service yielding