Over 500 million people rely directly on rangelands for their livelihoods, well-being and culture, and two billion more are indirectly dependent on rangeland ecosystem services and socio-economic benefits. Rangelands occupy over half of the global terrestrial land surface area, and include diverse ecosystems, often with high biodiversity value, many in arid and semi-arid climatic zones.
Rangeland soils are typically infertile with low organic carbon content but, in total, are estimated to contain almost 30% of the world’s terrestrial carbon. Protecting the huge carbon store in rangeland soils from loss through land use change, unsustainable land use and disturbance; restoring organic carbon in degraded soils; and, where possible, sequestering additional organic carbon through improved practices are priorities for addressing the critical global issues of climate change, food security, biodiversity, and ecosystem health, as advocated since 2015 by the international “4 per 1000” Initiative.
This Soil Carbon Note #5 was produced by the Scientific and Technical Committee of the international “4 per 1000” Initiative