# <u>Soil carbon pools</u>

In 1982, Post and colleagues (1982) estimated that soil organic carbon contains about two-thirds of the carbon in terrestrial ecosystems. This is a remarkable figure and it is perhaps surprising that the preservation of rich carbon pools have not garnered greater attention. There are several shared characteristics between below-ground carbon pools and above ground forests that are important for policy. Often forests and carbon pools are situated on lands where use rights are unclear and access to the resources are not easily limited by governments or private groups. In addition, while both land restoration and reforestation were included as features of early climate change treaties, including the Kyoto Protocol, the preservation of forests and carbon pools were not. To date, while the so-called REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation in Developing Countries) agenda is expected to be a key component of post-2012 climate change treaties, the preservation of carbon in soils has been given less political urgency.<sup>6</sup> A geographic dataset of organic carbon pooled in the topsoil constructed by FAO-UNESCO (2007) shows that immense stores of carbon are held in ECA‘s soils (Map 1). The Russian Federation has vast areas of relatively high-carbon pools most notably in the boreal forests of Siberia and nearby environments. In addition, Central Asia has a few carbon hotspots surrounded by relatively lower concentrations of soil carbon. Eastern Europe is mixed with all categories of terrain represented.

FAO (2010) also produced a dataset on land use, based on data from 1998-2008 (Map 2). A closer look at land use map reveals large forest area in the north and large area of crops and agriculture in mid-latitudes and the Eastern Europe. Central Asia has a few hotspots of agricultural and crop use.

By combining the two datasets, it is possible to say something about how the land containing carbon pools is used and managed. Aggregated data for the region as a whole is reported in Table 7.<sup>7</sup> Measuring the carbon content of soils is difficult, but the FAO estimates indicate the scale of the carbon pools in ECA. Overall, topsoils in ECA are estimated to contain the carbon equivalent of consuming 428 to 933 billion barrels of crude oil.<sup>8</sup> According to FAO‘s classification, roughly 47 percent of the area is used for agricultural purposes, and only about 24 percent is used for moderate to high intensity crop or livestock activities. FAO estimates that topsoil carbon contained in land put to these agricultural purposes ranges from 20,735 to 46,694 million tons of carbon (MtC), or roughly, 37-39 percent of the total. Remarkably, more than half the soil carbon is contained in soils that are unmanaged. Moreover, of the 28 to 60 thousand MtC of carbon in unmanaged soils, roughly half is contained in the soils beneath unprotected virgin forests. This means that policies aimed at protecting forests will have an additional benefit for climate change since the policy would also protect the soil contained in forest floors. Still, even if virgin forests received adequate protection, roughly 25 percent of the of the region‘s large reserves of soil carbon would remain in land that is neither managed by farmers nor protected in forests.

# <u>Russia and Turkey</u>

In this section, we examine differences in the composition of mitigation opportunities in Turkey and Russia, the two largest economies in the region, to illustrate how agriculture‘s role in the economy and its potential role in a country‘s mitigation strategy can differ. Both economies are of similar size; Turkey‘s GDP averaged

> 6 See Lal (2009) for a good discussion of the links between soil carbon and land use. See CBD (2009) discussion on the need to link forest, biodiversity and land-use policies.

> 7 FAO‘s original categories were aggregated to produce the table and the key to the aggregation is given in Annex table 1. The data is given at a country level in Annex table 2.

> 8 Based on EPA (2007) estimates that 1 ton of carbon is emitted for every 7.7 barrels of crude oil consumed. To lend perspective, the IEA (2012) estimates that global consumption of crude oil equaled 32.5 billion barrels in 2011.

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