1. LONDON GROUP MEETING ROME, DECEMBER ACCOUNTING FOR SOIL IN THE SEEA Session 8 on assets accounts
Jean-Louis Weber European Environment Agency
LONDON GROUP MEETING ROME, DECEMBER 2007

2. Storyline Soil is just mentioned per memory in the SEEA2003.
Soil is an ecosystem and a natural capital.
As an ecosystem, soil can be described by stocks and flows of components, resilience (stress and distress), functions and services.
Soil has an economic value associated to land use.
Other soil services are benefiting to people out of any production process.
The maintenance costs of soils are well known by agronomists… in developed and developing countries
LONDON GROUP MEETING ROME, DECEMBER 2007

3. Stocks, flows, threats and resilience
Stocks of soil can be measured inclusively as a complex material described by soil typology.
It can be measured as well for each main components: minerals, biomass, Carbon, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium (N, P, K, the 3 main fertilizing elements), fauna, flora and water.
Flow accounts can be (are) established for these components:
In asset accounts
In flow accounts (SUA, PIOT, Hybrid…)
LONDON GROUP MEETING ROME, DECEMBER 2007

4. The resilience of soil is its capacity of regenerating after stress
When traditional agriculture in Europe , made of small farming combining cultivation and husbandry generated rich soils, intensive practices have lead directly or indirectly to various types of soil degradation.
Towns, generally settled in food-rich areas are sprawling over the best soils which make their neighbourhood.
The concern is serious all over the World, made worse now by climate change or new perspectives of intensification for agro-fuels production.
LONDON GROUP MEETING ROME, DECEMBER 2007

5. e.g. Europe’s “soil strategy”: threats
Erosion
Organic matter decline
Compaction
Salinisation
Landslides
Contamination
Sealing
LONDON GROUP MEETING ROME, DECEMBER 2007

6. Functions of soil are multiple
(a) the production function, producing crops;
(b) the carrier function, bearing traffic and buildings;
(c) the filter, buffer and reactor function, allowing transformations of solutes passing through;
(d) the resource function, providing base material for industry;
(e) the habitat function, providing a living environment for plants and animals and
(f) the cultural and historic function, reflecting past practices.
(from Johan Bouma 2006)
LONDON GROUP MEETING ROME, DECEMBER 2007

7. And include as well
(g) the climate regulating function, by storing organic and inorganic carbon and sequestrating soil organic carbon (SOC) and by regulating water storage and evapotranspiration
LONDON GROUP MEETING ROME, DECEMBER 2007

8. Soil functions and ecosystem services
Ecosystem services are outcomes of functions contributing to human wellbeing
Functions (a), (b) and (d) refer clearly to market commodities.
Function (c) and (d) are partly internal to the ecosystem [not services as such] and partly a regulating services of collective use.
Function (e) is a cultural service mostly not valued by production.
Function (g) provides an essential regulating service
LONDON GROUP MEETING ROME, DECEMBER 2007

9. Focus on Carbon storage & sequestration by soil
Facts and scientific opinions:
The terrestrial biosphere currently sequesters 2 billion metric tons of carbon annually. (US Department of Agriculture)
Soils contain 82% of terrestrial carbon.
"Enhancing the natural processes that remove CO2 from the atmosphere is thought to be the most cost-effective means of reducing atmospheric levels of CO2." (US Department of Energy)
"Soil organic carbon is the largest reservoir in interaction with the atmosphere." (FAO) - Vegetation 650 gigatons, atmosphere 750 gigatons, soil 1500 gigatons
The carbon sink capacity of the world's agricultural and degraded soils is 50% to 66% of the historic carbon loss of 42 to 78 gigatons of carbon.
Grazing land comprises more than half the total land surface
An acre of pasture can sequester more carbon than an acre of forest.
Source: Christine Jones, The Soil Carbon Manifesto
LONDON GROUP MEETING ROME, DECEMBER 2007

10. LONDON GROUP MEETING ROME, 17-19 DECEMBER 2007

11. A flow account Carbon flux into atmosphere (gigatons C/year)
Fossil fuel burning Soil organic matter oxidation / erosion Respiration from organisms in biosphere Deforestation
4 - 5 50 2
Movement of C out of atmosphere (gigatons C/year)
Incorporation into biosphere through photosynthesis Diffusion into oceans
110
2.5
Overall Annual Net Increase in Atmospheric Carbon
Source: Christine Jones, The Soil Carbon Manifesto
LONDON GROUP MEETING ROME, DECEMBER 2007

12. Sequestering carbon in the soil represents about 89% of the mitigation potential [UNEP, 2007]
Complete C accounts should be addressed by the SEEA
Should help in clarifying debate on agro-fuels
Discussions on carbon credit trading system for farmers could benefit from soil accounting
LONDON GROUP MEETING ROME, DECEMBER 2007

13. Soil and water Soil humidity & vegetation.
Wet soils (wetlands) the most biomass productive
Hydromorphic soils handicap agriculture and are drained
Water is responsible of a large part of soil erosion
Irrigation compensate deficit in humidity, with risk of salinisation in beneficiary areas or/and of drying out of soil and wind erosion in supply or deprived areas
LONDON GROUP MEETING ROME, DECEMBER 2007

14. Aral Sea: from irrigation to desertification
Central Asia's Aral Sea, which was once the fourth largest inland sea in the world, has lost 60 percent of its volume and doubled in salinity since the diversion of its major tributary, the Amu Darya River, for irrigated cotton farming (UNEP 2005).
LONDON GROUP MEETING ROME, DECEMBER 2007

15. Soil biodiversity
Soil is the more species-rich habitats of terrestrial ecosystems
Soil's fauna is certainly not the most fashionable but the functions it carries out are essential for biodiversity in general, i.e. for life.
Source: Thibaud Decaëns, Juan José Jiménez, Christophe Gioia, Patrick Lavelle, The values of soil animals for conservation biology, European Journal of Soil Biology, 2006
LONDON GROUP MEETING ROME, DECEMBER 2007

16. Implementation strategy: Physical accounts
Knowledge on soils in countries and international organisations, first of all FAO, is huge
Risk: being lost in the many databases and maps
Start from the analysis of ecosystem services
Then back from services to descriptors of stocks, flows, resilience, stress [digital functional mapping approach]
Generalization of flows, threshold values on the basis of soil maps and databases
LONDON GROUP MEETING ROME, DECEMBER 2007

17. LONDON GROUP MEETING ROME, 17-19 DECEMBER 2007

18. Implementation strategy: Monetary accounts
Valuation of flows:
non-market end use ecosystem services [cultural and regulating services, including climate regulation].
full maintenance and restoration costs of domestic soils
full maintenance cost of soils in imports
NB: cost of replacing nutrients losses by fertilizers is an acceptable provisional proxy, but very incomplete
Valuation of assets:
Market price of land
Inclusive wealth
LONDON GROUP MEETING ROME, DECEMBER 2007

19. Tak !
LONDON GROUP MEETING ROME, DECEMBER 2007

20. Framework of Ecosystem Accounts
Spatial integration
Economic sectors
Accounts of flows of ecosystem goods and services
Core accounts of assets & flows
(by ecosystem types, raw quantities)
Material/energy flows
(biomass, water, nutrients, residuals)
Ecosystem Services
Market Ecosystem Services (€)
Non-market end use ES (physical units, €)
Supply & use of ecosystem goods and services
(Use of resource by sectors, supply to consumption & residuals, accumulation, I-O analysis, NAMEA)
Counts of stocks diversity / integrity
(by ecosystem types, focus on state, health, resilience, stress)
Ecosystem types
Natural capital
Natural capital stocks, resilience & wealth, distance to objective (physical units, by sectors)
Natural capital consumption/maintenance costs (€)
Ecosystem assets inclusive wealth (€)
Ecosystem Stocks & State Accounts
Natural Capital Accounts/ living & cycling natural capital
Economic integration
LONDON GROUP MEETING ROME, DECEMBER 2007

21. Spatial integration of ecosystem accounts
Production &
Consumption
Economic
Assets
Population
Infrastructures
& Technologies
Soil
Flora & Fauna
Water system
Atmosphere/
Climate
Inclusive use of market & non market ecosystem services
Ecosystem
services
Ecosystem
assets
Land use
economic & social
functions
Stocks
Material & energy flows
Resilience
Intensity of use & full maintenance costs
ECOSYSTEM ACCOUNTS
CORE LAND COVER ACCOUNT
LONDON GROUP MEETING ROME, DECEMBER 2007