Save the date: New webinar series on soil carbon stocks and stock changes in Latin America

Livestock and climate stakeholders in Latin America can now attend a new series of webinars on soil carbon stocks and stock changes.


16/08/2023

The FAO Livestock Environmental Assessment and Performance (LEAP) Partnership and the Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock (GASL) are calling for experts in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Uruguay to participate in the upcoming webinar series on soil carbon stocks and stock changes in Latin America. The event is designed for livestock, climate, and environment experts of Latin America with the aim to demonstrate the role of livestock as a tool for solutions in sustainable agriculture and food systems. Through this series of virtual seminars, experts will better understand how sustainable livestock systems in the region can support profitability, soil health, biodiversity conservation, food security, and carbon sequestration of carbon in grasslands.

Activities such as intensive livestock grazing can lead to the losses of soil carbon in grasslands. The intensification of livestock systems in Latin America is progressively reducing natural grassland areas, affecting also the ecosystem services provided by this biodiversity hotspot. Implementing sustainable practices is then crucial to conserve grasslands, increase the capacity of soils to sequester carbon, and contribute to counterbalance greenhouse gas emissions produced by livestock systems.

About the event

Through this webinar series, FAO and partners aim to provide livestock stakeholders in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Uruguay with adequate tools for soil carbon stocks assessment and grasslands management in Latin America. This webinar series will help stakeholders in those four target countries strengthen their capacity, and measure and model soil carbon stocks at the national and regional levels. The virtual seminars will be held as follows:

The series addresses livestock, climate and environment experts and welcomes all stakeholders from public and private sectors, NGOs, research institutes, academics, farmers and CSOs interested in the assessment of soil carbon stocks in grassland systems.

About soil carbon in grasslands

Soil organic carbon plays an important role for climate regulation. Grassland soils can store approximately 20 percent of stocks of soil organic carbon globally. Grassland and rangeland systems also represent a major feed source for livestock, sitting at the core of many socio-ecological systems. However, the conservation of natural grasslands and rangelands has been challenged in the last decades by the increasing demand for food, feed, fiber, and bioenergy crops, which are some of the main drivers for land use change at the global scale. Enhancing soil carbon stocks in grasslands can play an important role in achieving multiple Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement’s targets, as agroecosystems are increasingly seen as part of the solution for global problems such as climate change, food security provision, and environmental pollution.

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