Curb Soil Erosion to Curb Environmental Erosion: World Soil Day 2019

The theme for World Soil Day 2019 is "Stop soil erosion, Save our future."

This day promoted by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has, since 2012, hoped to raise awareness about the role healthy soil plays in "sustaining healthy ecosystems and human well-being." Ensuring "Good Health and Well-Being" #SDG3 as well as life on land #SDG15 can be achieved through healthy soil that produces healthy food and healthy people. Tending the soil can improve mental health and well-being. Thus the process of ensuring soil health - organic gardening and organic farming can ensure mental health. Healthy minds are vital for people to thrive.

As the member-states of the United Nations gather in Madrid at COP25 to discuss climate change, reports submitted there indicate that land degradation is a major driver of climate change.

Now while it's important to de-carbonize our economies and "Keep Oil in the Soil and Coal in the Hole." A major way that people and policy can help curb emissions and environmental degradation is by curbing soil erosion and restoring and rejuvenating the soil. Intensive organic agriculture and mixed agriculture especially cultivation amidst man-made mixed fruit forests or rice fields that farm fresh water fish in fields can help restore soil.

These fields of trees can provide shade on a hot day, fix soil and protect it from erosion as well as fixing water and carbon. The leaves that fall from them can bring in nutrition and organic matter to improve soil. This is permaculture harnessed to horticulture and agriculture underpinned by chemical-free organic restorative and regenerative cultivation practices. Agroforestry demonstrated by young Costa Rican farmer Alexander Retana, shows that we can increase green cover and produce food comfortably.

As Vandana Siva put it in the Year of the Soil in 2015 when we saw the signing of the Paris Climate Treaty, "we are nothing without living soil. ...If we make peace with the soil we make peace between people."

As the article in the Hindu Business Line indicates

In short, deforestation, which in itself raises carbon emissions by 25 per cent, along with all human activities pursued on the land, is the real cause of climate change in the form of extreme weather conditions like intense and untimely rains, floods, soil erosion, and high temperatures. 

Our lifestyle, the food we eat and from where we source it has an impact on the life of the planet and its soil. Unsustainable agricultural practices, industrial agriculture, deforestation caused by greed for more agricultural and grazing lands (Amazon and the Equatorial Rainforest in Southeast Asia being two key examples of vital primordial forests cut down or burnt down).

Ecological farming - restorative organic farming that puts organic matter back into the soil to keep it living instead of making a zombie out of it with petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides, can be the difference between life and death of the soil and of the human race.

We need to #StopSoilErosion in all its forms and unsustainable agricultural practices and unsustainable development are key reasons for dying soil.

via GIPHY

In a world where micro-hunger - the hunger for essential nutrients is as devastating to a different set of people as hunger is to the poorer populations, ensuring that the soil is healthy ensures that there is Zero Hunger #SDG2. Nutritious food can be produced through healthy and nutritious soil. Saving the soil can ensure that all the sustainable development goals are achieved. Smallholder farmers in the developing world must be engaged in preserving and restoring soil health. Making young farmers, women farmers, and small-scale farmers - usually marginalized and impoverished by industrial agriculture - should be made stakeholders who can benefit from ecological farming that restores soil health and ensures soil is safe from erosion. Organic ecological agriculture can be incorporated into climate adaptation and climate action measures that can be funded and trained by climate finance and green tech transfer.  These marginalized farmers can help #SaveOurFuture by saving the soil. Thus we can ensure social justice and climate justice by protecting soil.

"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.

SOIL AND FARMERS: KEY TO CLIMATE ACTION

December sees the celebration of Soil and the Farmer. Both are key in the fight against climate change and are essential for efficient climate action. 

 World Soil Day, initiated by the Food and Agriculture Organization, is observed on December 5th annually and the 2017 theme was

‘Caring for the Planet starts from the Ground’

Kisan Diwas or National Farmers’ Day is an  Indian celebration observed on December 23rd in honor of  the birth anniversary of the fifth Indian prime minister and leader of farmers, late Chaudhary Charan Singh. Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan is the nationalist cry and the farmer is the backbone of the Indian economy especially the rural sector which still employs a majority of Indians. Plagued by financial crises as well as climate change--exacerbated extreme weather the Indian farmer faces many challenges. With a majority of them being small-holders their livelihood which feeds the nation is fraught with financial and climate risks. 

By training Indian farmers - targeting especially small-hold farmers and women farmers - to go back to and readopt organic soil management  techniques could help reverse GHG emissions as well as bringing extra income through organic certification. The key is to link these producers to a market for their produce and ensure adequate profits go directly to the farmer. The social entrepreneurs Vishnu Vardhan and Divya Shetty of Indian Superheroes (ISH), who I had the privilege to meet and hear at the #GES2017 parallel event at IIT Madras on November 28th are making this happen. This bootstrapped initiative based out of Coimbatore is slowly convincing farmers to go organic and ensuring adequate revenue streams for them. A third or their 800-odd network of organic farmers are women. They even allow urbanites to "rent patches of organic farms to grow and harvest your own crops!" IRL Farmville a great way to generate interest and networks for organic farmers beyond the organic store. Kudos to Divya Shetty and her team.  

As Vandana Siva repeatedly emphasizes empowering our farmers and returning to organic farming and soil management can trap current carbon emissions in just three years and reverse adverse affects.

As we face the challenges of soil erosion as well as desertification, the solution is soil management by farmers. The sheer number of Indian farmers - if harnessed into the organic green revolution and soil protection movement could be the most efficient climate action.

Combating the devastation of soil erosion, desertification, flood-drought cycles, undependable monsoons, and avoid the trap of expensive pesticides and chemical fertilizers can save the farmer as well as the planet. Organic farming and soil management if adopted on a large scale will make a big difference in combating climate change and carbon emissions.