For the last year I've been meeting not only with farmers and ranchers, but also with economists, investors, non profits, and policy makers to strategize about how we can regenerate the soil carbon sponge on a large scale in a global economy that often seems designed to do just the opposite.
Clean Yield Asset Management heard about my efforts and asked me to write an article for their newsletter.
--Didi Pershouse, Board Chair SCC
It is rare as an investor to find a single leverage point to effect change and create multiple benefits to the world around us. However, the “soil sponge,” lowly as it sounds, is a tremendously effective point for investment, because it is the basic infrastructure for life on land. When healthy and productive, it can create beneficial feedback loops, because the Earth’s water cycle, carbon cycle, and nutrient cycle all depend on a functional soil sponge.
The soil sponge (also called the “soil carbon sponge”) is a living matrix that soaks up, stores, and filters water; holds landscapes in place; and provides nutrients for an entire food chain, from what would otherwise be bare rock and desert sands. These actions affect human and environmental health, resilience to extreme weather events, and eventually, local and global economies. Though the soil sponge is now severely degraded across much of the globe, it remains ready and willing to jump back into action as soon as we allow it. This article will explain what the soil sponge is, how it affects our climate, environment, human health, and even economies, and suggest a number of opportunities for stakeholders, including investors, to help create the conditions in which the soil sponge can regrow and function.
Click here to read the full article at Clean Yield Asset Management
Soil Carbon Coalition is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization