21
July 2008: The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) has announced the
development of a new database on the world’s soils. This database seeks to
improve knowledge of current and future land productivity, as well as the
carbon storage and carbon sequestration potential of the world’s soils. Using
the database, the FAO has also produced a global Carbon Gap Map, which allows
for the identification of areas where soil carbon storage is greatest and the
physical potential for billions of tons of additional carbon to be sequestrated
in degraded soils.

Different
soils have different capacities to act as a store for carbon, which has direct
implications for capturing greenhouse gases. The Harmonized World Soil Database
(HWSD) provides improved soil information worldwide, which is particularly
needed in the context of the UNFCCC and post-Kyoto Protocol instruments for
soil carbon measurements and carbon trading. The database can also assist
policy makers with decisions regarding land competition issues concerning food,
energy and biodiversity, and assessing the risks of land degradation,
particularly soil erosion risks. To create the HWSD, the FAO and the
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis combined recent regional
and national updates of soil information worldwide and incorporated the
FAO-UNESCO Soil Map of the World. Other partners, including the European Soil
Bureau Network, the Institute of Soil Science of the Chinese Academy of
Sciences, and ISRIC World Soils, also contributed information. [Harmonized
World Soil Database] [FAO News
Release]