TY - JOUR A1 - Paul, Carsten A1 - Bartkowski, Bartosz A1 - Dönmez, Cenk A1 - Don, Axel A1 - Mayer, Stefanie A1 - Steffens, Markus A1 - Weigl, Sebastian A1 - Wiesmeier, Martin A1 - Wolf, André A1 - Helming, Katharina T1 - Carbon farming: Are soil carbon certificates a suitable tool for climate change mitigation? JF - Journal of Environmental Management N2 - Increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks in agricultural soils removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and contributes towards achieving carbon neutrality. For farmers, higher SOC levels have multiple benefits, including increased soil fertility and resilience against drought-related yield losses. However, increasing SOC levels requires agricultural management changes that are associated with costs. Private soil carbon certificates could compensate for these costs. In these schemes, farmers register their fields with commercial certificate providers who certify SOC increases. Certificates are then sold as voluntary emission offsets on the carbon market. In this paper, we assess the suitability of these certificates as an instrument for climate change mitigation. From a soils' perspective, we address processes of SOC enrichment, their potentials and limits, and options for cost-effective measurement and monitoring. From a farmers’ perspective, we assess management options likely to increase SOC, and discuss their synergies and trade-offs with economic, environmental and social targets. From a governance perspective, we address requirements to guarantee additionality and permanence while preventing leakage effects. Furthermore, we address questions of legitimacy and accountability. While increasing SOC is a cornerstone for more sustainable cropping systems, private carbon certificates fall short of expectations for climate change mitigation as permanence of SOC sequestration cannot be guaranteed. Governance challenges include lack of long-term monitoring, problems to ensure additionality, problems to safeguard against leakage effects, and lack of long-term accountability if stored SOC is re-emitted. We conclude that soil-based private carbon certificates are unlikely to deliver the emission offset attributed to them and that their benefit for climate change mitigation is uncertain. Additional research is needed to develop standards for SOC change metrics and monitoring, and to better understand the impact of short term, non-permanent carbon removals on peaks in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and on the probability of exceeding climatic tipping points. KW - Carbon sequestration KW - Emission offset KW - CDR KW - Permanence KW - Agriculture KW - Private governance Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:eb1-opus-8140 SN - 0301-4797 IS - 330 PB - Elsevier ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bartkowski, Bartosz A1 - Bartke, Stephan A1 - Helming, Katharina A1 - Paul, Carsten A1 - Techen, Anja-Kristina A1 - Hansjürgens, Bernd T1 - Potential of the economic valuation of soil-based ecosystem services to inform sustainable soil management and policy JF - PeerJ N2 - The concept of ecosystem services, especially in combination with economic valuation, can illuminate trade-offs involved in soil management, policy and governance, and thus support decision making. In this paper, we investigate and highlight the potential and limitations of the economic valuation of soil-based ecosystem services to inform sustainable soil management and policy. We formulate a definition of soil-based ecosystem services as basis for conducting a review of existing soil valuation studies with a focus on the inclusion of ecosystem services and the choice of valuation methods. We find that, so far, the economic valuation of soil-based ecosystem services has covered only a small number of such services and most studies have employed cost-based methods rather than state-of-the-art preference-based valuation methods, even though the latter would better acknowledge the public good character of soil related services. Therefore, the relevance of existing valuation studies for political processes is low. Broadening the spectrum of analyzed ecosystem services as well as using preference-based methods would likely increase the informational quality and policy relevance of valuation results. We point out options for improvement based on recent advances in economic valuation theory and practice. We conclude by investigating the specific roles economic valuation results can play in different phases of the policy-making process, and the specific requirements for its usefulness in this context. KW - Agri-environmental policy; Ecosystem services; Economic valuation; Literature review; Multifunctionality; Policy cycle; Soil management Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:eb1-opus-6319 ER -