Wednesday 5 December 2018

"Keep Oil in the Soil": Key to #StopSoilPollution

Soil sustains life! Yet, soil health across the planet is rapidly worsening and top soil loss is worryingly prevalent. This soil loss leads to food insecurity due to reduced soil fertility and reduced capacity to store water, desertification, biodiversity loss, and inability of the soil to perform its natural function as a powerful carbon sink. Soil pollution, bad agricultural practices such as excessive use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides, overgrazing by farm animals and introduction of invasive animal and plant species, as well as deforestation all lead to soil degradation and soil erosion.

 This World Soil Day, December 5, 2018, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) sought to raise awareness about the dangers of soil loss and reduced soil health by calling for people to be part of the "Solution to Soil Pollution" and #StopSoilPollution.

One key way to #StopSoilPollution is to stop the use of fossil fuels. Extraction, fracking, refining and use of fossil fuels are all leading causes for soil pollution. Even exploration for fossil fuels is highly damaging to the soil in particular and the environment in general. Thus the fact that People's Demand for Climate Justice that mandates keeping fossil fuels in the ground, i.e., halting further extraction, is not just positive climate action but also essential to preserve the soil and #StopSoilPollution. Thermal power plants produce fly ash after burning coal that if left as is and dumped on lands can pollute soil, water and air as well as affecting the health of humans and their environment. Fossil fuel mines devastate the soil, environment and lives of communities near them, as do refineries. Hence, the call to "Keep Oil in the Soil" and "Coal in the Hole" must become a war cry of people's movements for climate justice and the environment.



Instead of "Smart Agriculture" the soil needs organic farming to regenerate.  Organic agricultural practices improves the health of the soil and enables the soil to be transformed into a powerful carbon sink. As seed warrior and activist and physicist Vandana Siva reiterates, regenerative organic agriculture has the capacity to trap current carbon emissions in just three years.


Organic farming is the epitome of natural climate solutions and climate justice. And its practice using ancestral methods and know-how and women farmer-- and smallholding farmer--friendly, keeps people not corporations at the heart of the climate solution. Thus organic agriculture builds soil health and helps

"Reject false solutions that displace real, people-first solutions to the climate crisis.


Chemical fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides are produced from crude - that most insidious of fossil fuel guises. More use of fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides means more fossil fuel and emissions. Thus by promoting organic agriculture, the use of these fossil fuel derived chemicals is cut. The carbon emissions are cut and finally the organic soil performs the function of a powerful and natural carbon sink. Hence combined with a halt to all fossil fuel extraction, globally scaled-up practice of organic agriculture can save the soil and save the planet. Policies that ensure this twofer can help speed up achieving the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement - ensuring that a world where global warming is kept under 1.5 degrees can become a reality faster.

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