Pecan Street CEO Suzanne Russo is attending COP 25 in Madrid. 

   By Suzanne Russo, CEO, Pecan Street

Today is “Ambition Day” at COP 25 in Madrid – the day companies and institutions make new commitments to fighting climate change. Pecan Street is happy to make our own commitment to a promising area of climate research: soil.

The scale of the climate change challenge requires solutions of equal scale, and carbon sequestration within farmland soils offers a unique opportunity to reduce emissions. Globally, agriculture accounts for 24% of greenhouse gas emissions. Turning this sector into a climate solution that extracts more carbon from the atmosphere could provide global relief from climate change within the next 5 to 10 years.

After a yearlong investigation into the opportunities and challenges with soil carbon sequestration, we believe the Pecan Street model can help to accelerate progress toward realizing the potential of this critical carbon sink. In the face of the global climate crisis, Pecan Street’s Board of Directors has dedicated some of the organization’s reserve funds to launch this initiative so we can begin to work with researchers and industry partners while we pursue new funding streams to enable the work of a full soil research consortium.

And so it is appropriate that today I get to spend Ambition Day at the annual convening of the 4p1000 consortium.

4p1000 is probably the most important and hopeful global climate solution that you’ve never heard of. It was initiated at COP21 in Paris by the French government to organize international research around soil carbon sequestration and establish a solutions pipeline to achieve the climate goal of increasing carbon sequestered in croplands by 0.4% per year while increasing the security of our food systems.

We look forward to our continued work with 4p1000 and will keep you updated as our soil research gains momentum.