Development of high spatial-resolution monitoring approaches and geographically-explicit registry for carbon farming

Deadline: Oct 8, 2024  
- 143 days

Activities under this topic will help to progress towards the objectives of the Mission ‘A Soil Deal for Europe’, in particular specific objective 2 “Conserve and increase soil organic carbon stocks”. Activities will also support the proposed Carbon Removal Certification (CRC) Framework (including through collaboration with the Commission’s Expert Group on Carbon Removals) ^[1], the Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) Regulation ^[2], the Common Agricultural Policy, the EU Action Plan on the development of Organic Production, and the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13 on Climate action.

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following outcomes:

• The confidence of stakeholders (including land managers) in participating in possible carbon farming certification schemes and the attractiveness of the carbon farming ^[3] business model are enhanced through better access to information and data regarding soil carbon (achievable sequestration and storage, risks of release, etc.). This should allow to improve soil management performance and mitigate the negative climate impact of activities in EU Member States and Associated Countries.
• Reliable benchmarks or baselines for soil carbon at land management parcel level across the EU are established, with a view to providing financial rewards to those farmers and forest managers/owners who go beyond the baselines within the proposed framework for Carbon Removal Certification.
• Improved decision making in the LULUCF sector at the regional or national level thanks to enhanced quality of national GHG inventories and geographically explicit soil monitoring elements that reflect action at the individual level.
• Market situation and social dimension are better integrated into EU carbon farming policy, in particular as regards the impact of carbon farming incentives on rural development, farmers’ and foresters’ incomes, competitiveness, food security and land access. Business strategies and (digital) marketplaces for carbon farming, including a registry for carbon farming credits/certificates, support EU carbon farming policy.
• Regulated EU carbon credits and environmental and financial incentives, within legal frameworks and for certified measures for carbon farming deployment strategies, specifically for foresters and agricultural land managers or owners, are supported. This should be aligned with the EU CRC Framework aiming at promoting carbon removal activities and fight greenwashing by encouraging forestry and agricultural sectors to act in this field and effectively demonstrate that carbon farming can be quantified through appropriate monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) methods.

With the European Commission’s proposal for a first EU-wide voluntary framework to reliably certify high-quality carbon removals (Carbon Removal Certification -CRC- Framework) ^[4], the EU aims to boost sustainable carbon farming solutions by significantly improving Europe's capacity to quantify, monitor and verify carbon removals. Higher transparency will ensure trust from stakeholders and prevent greenwashing. The development of soil carbon removal deployment strategies and a robust and validated soil carbon monitoring system approach, at scale relevant for land managers, are therefore crucial. This system approach is currently underdeveloped and solid and reliable data for establishment of baselines for soil carbon at parcel level across Europe are missing. The system approach should further the potential for financial rewards to farmers and forest managers/owners who excel in their carbon farming practices, in line with the CRC Framework proposal. It should also lead to enhanced quality of national greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories for the Land Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry (LULUCF) sector, as well as be relevant for the establishment of the database for the proposed EU Soil Monitoring Law.

To show the extent to which a carbon farming activity results in a positive climate impact, the European Commission will establish standardised baselines reflecting the standard performance of comparable activities in similar social, economic, environmental and technological circumstances and geographical locations. This type of baselines ensures objectivity and transparency, minimises compliance costs and other administrative costs, and positively recognises the action of first movers who have already engaged in carbon farming activities. However, the geographically-explicit data needed to identify and set such standardised baselines and help prioritise regions and actions for carbon farming is currently missing.

Moreover, it is important that the EU boosts sustainable carbon farming solutions by enabling a business model that financially rewards land managers for such activities, as stressed by the EU CRC Framework and the Commission’s 2021 Communication on Sustainable Carbon Cycles. The EU CRC Framework aims to ensure that financial incentives from both private and public sources are channelled towards high-quality carbon removals and nature-based solutions. However, to ensure its correct functioning, interoperable public registries and MRV protocols compliant with standards and technical rules to be set out at EU level are needed. These will ensure transparency, full traceability of carbon farming certificates, an easily accessible marketplace for these certificates, and avoid fraud risk and double counting.

Proposed activities should:

• Develop, validate and apply pilot, innovative, robust, local soil carbon monitoring systems in line with the CRC Framework proposal, able to gather the data needed for the European Commission to set out standardised baselines reflecting the standard performance of comparable activities in similar social, economic, environmental and technological circumstances and geographical locations in Europe. These systems should also allow to evaluate achievable biophysical potential of carbon storage and related co-benefits of carbon farming activities, at land management parcel-scale ^[5] and for the whole European territory, and help prioritise regions and actions for carbon farming.
• Investigate and develop approaches and methodologies for soil ^[6] sampling pertinent to the granular level of the monitoring, including assessment and exploitation of the technological innovation opportunities and the potential to reduce monitoring costs.
• Leverage the power of existing remote sensing tools such as those typically employed in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) control, i.e., in conjunction with spatially explicit parcel data (e.g., Land Parcel Identification System - Geospatial Application (LPIS-GSA)); and develop a structured, standardized system for understanding and managing the direct effect of carbon farming practices on soil carbon (including the practices promoted by the CAP).
• Demonstrate and where possible expand the power of digital tools and technologies (including electronic databases and geographic information systems/geographically-explicit digital map data, remote sensing, artificial intelligence and machine learning) for (decreasing the costs of) the data collection, for establishing baselines and for the monitoring of carbon removal activities.
• Deliver guidance (e.g. manuals) for policymakers and certification bodies on soil monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV), data collection protocols, and baselines against which action is quantified. Such guidance should be designed within the upcoming EU CRC Framework and in consultation with the Commission's Expert Group on Carbon Removals.
• Develop and test harmonisation protocols within a distributed data management system for the integration and direct comparison of upcoming CRC data and existing spatially explicit information contained in national LULUCF inventories and other soil organic carbon datasets (such as LUCAS, and pertinent national datasets).
• Develop a framework to collect and analyse data coming from certificates (both within existing voluntary carbon markets and the upcoming CRC Framework), to define reliable ranges of carbon sequestration and outliers, and consolidate interoperable, quality-checked datasets.
• Use results of the above work to calibrate and validate modelling frameworks applicable to the monitoring methodologies mentioned above in this topic.
• Create metrics to gauge carbon sensitivity to perturbations, particularly those linked with climate change, by analysing different soil carbon fractions.
• Evaluate the permanency-related risks of release of carbon, using modelling scenarios.
• Address key uncertainties and scientific knowledge gaps that currently exist within carbon removal quantification methods, helping to develop a standardised MRV approach.
• Undertake an in-depth assessment of the market situation for carbon farming, building on existing and ongoing research, to assess the (expected) overall market impacts of carbon farming, including the potential income opportunities for farmers and other land managers, impacts on land productivity and land prices, and sensitivities over the “commodification” of carbon removals and ecosystem services, for different carbon farming activities (e.g. agroforestry, rewetting of land and other practices).
• Analyse the different channels and business strategies for the marketing of certified carbon removals, providing an overview of the current market and outlook for the next 10 years. This analysis should consider differences between marketing certified carbon removals within and outside the agri-food or forestry value chains and identify the relevant market players in each case.
• Create a network among existing carbon farming schemes across several European countries and scale up their activities by developing an interoperable digital marketplace, based on a geographically-explicit registry, that provides easier access to the carbon farming units certified by those different schemes. This registry should follow the rules set out in the CRC Framework and be consistent with Member States’ reporting in the LULUCF sector so as to enable Member States to improve their GHG inventory data. The registry should enable monetary transactions involving carbon credits, however the project(s) should not directly carry out such transactions.

The ‘carbon farming’ activities to be covered are those defined in the CRC Framework proposal. Whenever relevant, the synergies and trade-offs between carbon and nitrogen and their possible optimisation should be covered. All types of land, including forests and their above-ground biomass, where relevant, should be covered. In the case of the agricultural sector, organic farming, as an approach with potential to increase carbon sequestration in the soil, should be included.

Key information/data on soil carbon should be shared with land managers, to enable them to learn from peers and facilitate access to tailored advice and certification services to improve their soil management performance and verify the mitigation impact of their activities in view of possible certification. Given the necessity for new ideas that meet social needs, create social relationships and form new collaborations within this topic's subject, proposals should integrate social innovation.

Proposals should include a dedicated task and appropriate resources to collaborate with other relevant forthcoming projects as well as to capitalise on activities and results from on-going, relevant projects. In particular, projects should build on the preparatory work done by projects funded by the EJP SOIL programme (e.g. CarboSeq project), AI4SoilHealth, BENCHMARKS, MaRVIC, MRV4SOC, CREDIBLE, HoliSoils, CLIMB-FOREST, INFORMA, OptFor-EU, the ORCaSa project, InBestSoil, NOVASOIL, SoilValues, and the project originating from the HORIZON-MISS-2023-SOIL-01-09 topic (on carbon farming in living labs), as well as work carried out by the Joint Research Centre on the establishment of baselines for the implementation of the CRC Framework.

Proposals should demonstrate a route towards open access, longevity, sustainability and interoperability of knowledge/data and outputs, and between existing databases and models, through close collaboration with the Joint Research Centre’s EU Soil Observatory (EUSO), the upcoming EU Forest Observatory and the project SoilWISE. In particular, proposals should ensure that relevant data, maps and information can potentially be available publicly through the EUSO.

[1]Commission proposes certification of carbon removals (europa.eu)

[2]https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:02018R0841-20230511

[3]I.e. including enhanced carbon sequestration in forests, etc. See also definition at the bottom of the topic

[4]COM(2022) 672 of 30 November 2022, COM_COM(2022)0672_EN.pdf (europa.eu)

[5]Paying attention also to those land-uses changes that may impact carbon dynamics in soils, such as the construction of renewable energy plants in soils with high carbon stock

[6]Including possibly porewater, whenever relevant