A historic landmark for the role of soil health in climate and food security: “Soil health” in COP28 UAE Declaration
R. Lal
Abstract
The first Conference of the Parties (COP) of The United Nations Framework Convention to Combat Climate Change (UN-FCCC) was held in Berlin, Germany, in 1995.There were 192 parties (countries) to the convention, and these countries signed the international treaty in 1992 called UN-FCCC.This treaty is a framework for international cooperation to combat (adapt and mitigate) the anthropogenic climate change.Some notable accomplishments of UNFCCC include The Kyoto Treaty of 1997, which was designed to legally bind developed countries to reach emission reduction targets for the first period from 2008 to 2012 and the second period from 2013 to 2020.Similarly, the 2015 Paris Agreement adopted on December 12, 2015, in Paris charted a new course in the global effort to combat climate change.The Paris Agreement (COP21) also launched the nonbinding "4 Per Thousand" (4PT) initiative, which encouraged countries to sequester carbon (C) in soil to 40 cm depth at the rate of 4 per 1,000 or 0.4% y -1 (Lal 2018).The COP22, held in Marrakesh, Morocco, from November 7 to 18, 2016, launched the initiative called "Adaptation of African Agriculture" (AAA) to climate change.The AAA initiative is aimed at reducing the vulnerability of Africa and its agriculture to climate change (aaainitiative.org/en/initiative).The AAA is focused on placing the adaptation of African agriculture as the central focus of climate debate and negotiation by the parties.It encourages identification and implementation of site-specific projects to adopt improved soil management, water conservation, climate risk avoidance, capacity building, and financing solutions.In addition to addressing climate change, the AAA initiative is also aimed at addressing the perpetual issue of food and nutrition security (FNS) in Africa.The African Union has endorsed the AAA initiative as a mechanism for channel-