The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR and World Agroforestry (ICRAF) joined forces in 2019, leveraging a combined 65 years’ experience in research on the role of forests and trees in solving critical global challenges.
Recently, the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF), brought together policy experts involved in the development of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change to share key opportunities and barriers for integrating soil health into national climate change adaptation and mitigation plans.
Held as a virtual roundtable meeting, the panel discussion highlighted findings from the Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA) programme, which spans six focus countries: Senegal, Mali, Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya and Zambia. The project seeks to “make climate information services and climate-smart agriculture more accessible to millions of smallholder farmers across Africa.”
Soil plays an integral role in carbon storage, accounting for about a third of global stocks. However, soil organic carbon is being released at an alarming rate under widespread land degradation. “Twenty to forty percent of Earth’s surface is degraded, which impacts 3.2 billion people,” said Leigh Winowiecki, Research Leader for CIFOR-ICRAF’s Soil and Land Health Theme. “Most of these are the rural poor.”