HoliSoils policy brief goes global with translation into 11 languages
The first HoliSoils policy brief, Forest soils can increase climate change mitigation with targeted management, has dramatically extended its reach to stakeholders around the world with translation into 11 languages.
The HoliSoils project consortium took quick measures to ensure the recent policy brief, published in May 2023, could be accessible to stakeholders in their own countries and beyond. The document is now available in Bosnian, Catalan, Chinese, Finnish, French, German, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, and Spanish.
The policy brief translations, stemming from the original publication from the European Forest Institute, shows how considering forest soils in improved management practices increases climate change mitigation. Forest management practices can affect soil carbon stock, soil CO2 emissions, and net exchange of other greenhouse gases such as methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). Increasing forest soils’ capacity to store carbon and reduce net GHG emissions is crucial for the EU’s target to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
This policy brief is based on a publication by the HoliSoils project which emphasises that the European forest sector needs a comprehensive understanding of the carbon sequestration potential of soils to help design climate change mitigation measures.
Recommendations in the brief include better accounting of forest soil responses to management practices, integrating their effects into existing modelling tools, and creating awareness of the importance of soil mitigation potential for climate change mitigation. The brief also calls for considering site-specific conditions for climate-smart forest management practices and reducing knowledge gaps in understanding how soil carbon balances and GHG emissions are affected by forest management, climate, biodiversity loss, and other environmental changes, as well as their trade-offs.
What is clear is that long-term soil monitoring is needed to verify targeted changes in soil carbon sequestration and reductions of GHG emissions to confirm which management practices are efficient in climate change mitigation, a goal to which the HoliSoils project is working hard to contribute.
Access all the translations from the HoliSoils website!
Holistic management practices, modelling and monitoring for European forest soils – HoliSoils – is funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 101000289.
