Soil Carbon Baselining Workshop

On the 25th of June, the Soil Health and Carbon Dynamics Topic Advisory Group (Soil TAG) hosted the Soil Carbon Baselining workshop. This workshop sought to address some of the questions surrounding soil carbon baselining by exploring different approaches taken by a range of organisations who have carried out soil carbon baselining at different scales and for different purposes. This was then followed by a Q&A and guided discussion.

Environmental baselining is now an important requirement for organisations looking to understand the state of the natural assets in their care, how they change over time and the impact of their interventions. However, the question of how to design a soil carbon baseline and for what purpose is a challenge for a variety of stakeholders – farmers, corporates, governments, and landowners. It raises a range of technical, scientific, and financial questions – including how to balance integrity with costs against an uncertain policy backdrop, and changing expectations of what is meant by high-integrity.

Soil carbon baselining is under particular scrutiny given the increase of national and corporate climate targets, supply chains reporting requirements, the evolving market for carbon storage and sequestration and the emergence of a variety of new measurement technologies. The Soil TAG’s Soil Carbon Baselining workshop therefore aimed to shed light on the different soil carbon baselining methodologies implemented by different organisations and the purposes that these different methodologies serve.