Exploring Opportunities to Increase Soil Organic Carbon: Analysis of Four Soil Carbon Offset Trading Protocols

As society seeks to mitigate the impact of global climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), governments are seeking policy that can effectively deliver GHG emission reductions. Agriculture soils have contributed to rising GHG emissions over the past century however, with the adoption and continued use of conservation agriculture cropping systems (no-till and direct seeding) agricultural soils can sequester carbon dioxide as soil organic carbon. Emerging carbon trading protocols attempt to address the concerns of stakeholders that marketable soil carbon offsets are real and verifiable. Agriculture is however, a complex industry and defining carbon offset additionality in soil is a challenge; a challenge that has limited agricultural soils from being included in national and international trading schemes. Four carbon offset trading protocol are analyzed to determine their ability to deliver verifiable offsets and the impact they may have on the future adoption of conservation agriculture cropping systems.