French wine lovers have always taken their soil very seriously. But now the country’s government has introduced fresh reasons for the rest of the world to pay attention to their terroir.

As industrial emissions of greenhouse gases continue to increase and concerns about climate change grow, scientists and policy wonks are searching for potential solutions.

Could part of the answer lie in the soil beneath our feet? French agriculture minister Stéphane Le Foll thinks so.

Soil stores vast amounts of carbon, far more than all the carbon in the world’s forests and atmosphere combined. Plants take carbon out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis and when they die the carbon they stored is returned to the soil.

This forms part of the soil’s organic matter: a mix of undecayed plant and animal tissues, transient organic molecules and more stable material often referred to as humus. It is food for organisms in the soil that play a vital role in cycling nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus.

These organisms decompose the organic material and return much of the carbon to the atmosphere leaving only a small proportion in the soil.

Over time, soil carbon capture can make a big difference

At a March 2015 conference on Climate Smart Agriculture, Le Foll proposed the ambitious target of increasing French soil carbon contents by 0.4% year-on-year (‘4 pour mille’):

“A relative increase of four parts per thousand per year in the stocks of organic matter in soils would be enough to compensate for the sum of greenhouse gas emissions across the planet. On the other hand, a relative loss of four parts per thousand wouild double our emissions

“It is therefore, and this is the conclusion I want to draw, essential to protect carbon in soils and to develop mechanisms to increase soil carbon stocks and the formation of organic matter.”

How France will meet the target is currently unclear but by throwing down the gauntlet Le Foll clearly wants to stimulate French farmers and researchers into action, and trigger a wider international research effort.

A 0.4% increase might not sound like a lot but, given the scale of carbon storage in soil and the fact that small increases add up over the years, meeting the target would have a significant impact on atmospheric CO₂ concentrations.

Le Foll hopes that protecting carbon-rich soils (like those in natural bogs, permanent grassland or wetlands), better use of organic manures and farming that returns more plant biomass to the soil (such as by using cover crops and ploughing their residues into the earth) together with the use of bioenergy crops such as short rotation willow coppice, can contribute towards a 40% reduction in France’s CO₂ emissions by 2030.

He plans to bring forward an international programme to promote increases in soil carbon and to propose it to the UN climate talks in Paris. Such a programme would include research, innovation and engagement with farmers.

There is no doubt this is a bold move. Research has shown raising soil carbon contents is not that easy due to much of the organic matter added to soils being lost to the atmosphere as it is decomposed by soil microbes.

The benefits go way beyond carbon capture!

However, protecting the carbon we already have in our soils and just storing a little more could make a big difference. In the UK most soil carbon (by far) is found in peaty soils under bogs, followed by soils under grass, woodland and arable agriculture.

In total our soils store around 10 billion tonnes of carbon – that’s about 65 times the country’s annual carbon emissions. Protecting this carbon should be the first priority, then increasing the amount of carbon in our soils has the potential to suck even more CO₂ out of the atmosphere.

That means maintaining and restoring bogs, avoiding conversion of grassland and forestry to arable land, or even reconverting arable land to grassland. These measures would all have a positive effect on soil carbon stocks.

Whether all this can deliver the 0.4% increase year-on-year that the French want is open to debate. What is clear though is that not only does soil offer a way to store carbon and help mitigate climate change, carbon-rich soil has numerous other benefits.

It is more fertile and helps to promote food production, it improves soil’s physical properties – protecting against soil erosion and increasing water-holding capacity – and it enhances biodiversity.

Promoting practices that increase soil carbon contents really is a win for both the soil and the climate.

John Quinton is Professor of Soil Science, Lancaster University, and Executive Editor of the Journal SOIL.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The prominent climate scientist James Hansen, who came to Norway on Tuesday this week, has called climate change a “planetary emergency”.

This description reflects the consensus in climate science. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that global warming of over two degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial levels will lead to a high risk of catastrophic consequences.

These include triggering mass species extinction, widespread ecosystem collapse, and the destruction of the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people.

Yet fossil fuel investments and existing decision-making processes are currently steering us towards a world that will be at least four degrees warmer by 2100.

Such an extreme scenario has direct relevance for Norway’s plans for oil extraction in the Arctic. The Norwegian government recently opened 57 new ‘blocks’ of petroleum exploration acreage in waters that stretch to the edge of the Arctic sea ice in a process known as the ’23rd licensing round.’

In February 2016, these blocks will, in all probability, be allocated to operators that have applied for exploration permits in the Barents Sea. This is ‘business as usual’ for Norwegian petroleum policy.

But since 1994 – the last time new blocks for exploration were opened in entirely new areas on the Norwegian continental shelf – we have gained far better knowledge about the climate. We now know that at least 70% of the world’s remaining fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground if we are to have a 50% chance of keeping within the two-degree limit.

Which reserves should be left in the ground – and where? Common limits for fossil fuel extraction are unlikely to be allocated and regulated through international law for the foreseeable future. But existing legislation at national level can contribute to clarifying where the lines should be drawn.

The Norwegian Constitution vs. oil extraction?

A recent academic article by law professors Beate Sjåfjell and Anita Margrethe Halvorssen concludes that oil extraction in the Arctic – the area in the world where petroleum activities will have the worst environmental and human rights-related consequences, and contribute most to climate change – violates the Norwegian Constitution.

We support their assessment. According to the Norwegian Constitution’s Article 112, the state has an obligation to take measures to guarantee citizens’ rights to a secure climate, including for our descendants.

For a number of years, we have been told that oil is, in fact, such a measure: a bridge from coal on the road to a zero-emissions world. This is, at best, fanciful thinking and, at worst, deliberate disinformation.

Oil’s political alchemists, including Prime Minister Erna Solberg and opposition Labour leader Jonas Gahr Støre, tell us that Norwegian oil and gas can replace more damaging coal in world energy markets and thus provide a positive net effect. However, they cannot substantiate this claim.

A 2013 report from Statistics Norway, the country’s central statistics bureau, shows, on the contrary, that the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions is “with supply side measures, that is, reduced oil extraction.”

Today’s aggressive oil policy lacks an empirical basis. Sjåfjell and Halvorssen also show that the consequences of the 23rd licensing round have not been properly assessed, and that citizens have therefore not received the information to which they are entitled.

The Constitution gives citizens the right to information about “the effects of any encroachment on nature that is planned or carried out”, and thus the state’s deficient analysis of and information on the climate-related consequences of oil extraction in the Arctic is itself a breach of the Constitution.

Our trajectory to a +3.5C world

Norway is not alone in following an extraction trajectory that threatens civilisation. A long list of states and actors are jostling for position in the race for the remainder of the world’s fossil fuel reserves.

So far, states have made promises on emissions reductions from 2020 that, according to a study conducted by MIT, can only limit global warming to 3.5 degrees. This is two degrees over the level James Hansen and many climate scientists consider safe. To what extent the pledges made at the coming Paris climate summit will be delivered on in practice also remains highly uncertain.

The international community’s relative lawlessness when it comes to climate change does not give us a blank cheque to pursue an ‘anything goes’ policy on the Norwegian continental shelf.

Norway’s domestic emissions are relatively low but, as an oil and gas exporter, we are the source of around 1.5% of the annual CO2 increase from fossil fuels in the atmosphere. The giant Johan Sverdrup field alone will lead to nearly 800 million tonnes of CO2 emissions.

Extraction in the Arctic is even more indefensible because it will only be profitable with high oil demand – that is, in a world without effective climate policy. The 23rd licensing round is based on the assumption that the international community will fail to observe the two-degree limit.

When the state makes long-term plans on the Norwegian continental shelf that to such a great extent sabotage Norway’s broader climate targets, it runs roughshod over the limits laid down in the Constitution and violates our most basic rights.

It is therefore necessary to turn to the courts for protection. A range of Norwegian organisations and individuals have begun exploring a possible climate civil action against the Norwegian state. The newly-formed Article 112 Association is now gathering support to prepare a lawsuit.

Not just Norway. Holland, Pakistan, Belgium, Australia …

Similar initiatives are spreading across the globe. In June, the Dutch foundation Urgenda had its claim upheld in court and the Dutch government was ordered to reduce its emissions. Two weeks ago, a court in Pakistan declared that the state must enforce its own climate targets after a suit launched by a farmer.

Climate lawsuits are planned in Belgium and Australia, and Our Children’s Trust in the USA is using state law to limit emissions that are not regulated by federal authorities. Climate scientist James Hansen is a key player in this work and has also declared he is willing to appear as an expert witness in the action being prepared in Norway.

Climate harms are caused by cumulative emissions, and the responsibility is shared between innumerable actors and individuals. But the consequences of the coming decades’ priorities alone, in Norway and across the globe, can be more destructive than any other wrong committed in human history. The Arctic must be protected as our shared frontline in the climate struggle.

If the Norwegian parliament does not cancel the 23rd licensing round, a climate lawsuit with broad popular support will be an important part of a necessary project: to write the beginning of the end of the fairytale of unrestricted oil extraction in Norway.

Petition: ‘Stop unconstitutional oil drilling in the Arctic!‘. 2,500 signatories upwards include authors Karl Ove Knausgård and Jostein Gaarder, musicians like Susanne Sundfør, and a series of high profile Norwegian academics, environmentalists and cultural figures.

Aleksander Melli is chair of the Paragraph 112 Association. Pål W. Lorentzen is a Supreme Court advocate. Mari Seilskjær is a lawyer. Hans Morten Haugen is a law professor at Diakonhjemmet University College. Truls Gulowsen heads Greenpeace Norway. He tweets @TrulsGulowsen.

This article is an English translation based on an article published in the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet. It was published in this form by openDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

A group of Mohawks lit a bonfire next to a busy train line in a protest yesterday to oppose the city of Montreal’s plan to dump billions of liters of raw sewage into the St. Lawrence River.

“On October 7, the women sent a notice of objection to the city of Montreal. We have not received a response”, the group said in a statement read during the action.

“This notice is our warning to the city of Montreal to stop dumping waste that is toxic to our lands, life and waterways. The temporary obstruction on Thursday, October 15 is to emphasize our objection to this environmentally destructive action.”

At around 9 am on Thursday morning, the group of Mohawks from the Kahnawake reserve, including members of the Mohawk Warrior Society, gathered near Adirondack Junction and put together a bonfire a few feet away from the train tracks. They held indigenous flags as the flames engulfed two large logs they placed on top of the fire and then read their statement.

“The release of the equivalent of 2,600 Olympic-sized swimming pools will result in unknown contamination and multi-generational devastation of the entire ecosystem”, the group’s statement read.

“We come to you with the gentleness of a feather which we hope will be accepted. Should you not respond reasonably, you leave us no alternative but to take necessary action to convince you. There has been no commitment to not dump. We would like the mayor to take responsibility to preserve our waterways.”

Major of Quebec: ‘We have no alternative!’

Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre, with the approval of Quebec’s environmental department, has been pushing to dump eight billion liters of untreated sewage into the St. Lawrence River between 18th and 25th October.

Coderre insists that, in order to make necessary repairs and move a large snow collector pipe located underneath the Bonaventure Expressway, a nearby sewage treatment facility needs to be temporarily shut down.

Therefore, according to the mayor, they have no choice but to throw all this sewage into the river since there is nowhere else to put it. Some Canadian wastewater treatment experts also agree with the mayor’s decision. The mayor had hoped that the infrastructural repairs would be finished by November 15 before any major snowfalls.

With the federal election only days away, Coderre, a liberal, has received pushback from environmentalists as well as his political opponents over the planned dumping. An online petition opposing the plan titled ‘The St. Lawrence Is Not A Garbage Can‘ has collected over 90,000 signatures.

But Coderre insists there’s no problem with the dumping. “In 2003, we did the same. In 2007, we did the same, and Environment Canada said yes to that”, he told the Montreal Gazette. “What’s going on? It’s [the] exact same thing.”

‘Our life is on that river’

Nonetheless, on October 14, just days before it was scheduled to begin, the Canadian federal government ordered a halt to Montreal’s planned dumping. Minister of Infrastructure Denis Lebel made the announcement that the dumping would be put on hold pending further scientific analysis, and Minister of the Environment Leona Aglukkaq released a statement.

“Based on limited data, Environment Canada cannot conclude whether or not the untreated wastewater to be released will be acutely toxic”, Lebel told the Canadian Press.

Though the federal government put a temporary halt to the plan, the Mohawk group stated the the protest actions would go on regardless.

“In our law, we’re supposed to protect the Earth, and we’re carrying out our responsibilities”, Akohserake Deer, a spokesperson for the group, told the Montreal Gazette. “Whether the project is on or off doesn’t matter, it’s just another stalling tactic by the [federal] government.”

The group had also originally announced that they would blockade a busy train line but didn’t specify when they would do so. When asked about possible future actions, the group’s spokespeople preferred not to say, only stating that they would take action to protect their lands and resources if the planned dumping gets put back into motion.

“We’re informing Mayor Coderre that this is unacceptable”, a spokeswoman for the Mohawk group said during the bonfire demo. “We want him to take an alternative route to the dumping. They can do it. They have the funds to do it. The problem is money.

“And to us, we’re protecting our river and money is not our concern. Our future generations are our concern. Our life is on that river.” 

Ashoka Jegroo is a journalist born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He has bylines inThe Santiago Times and the New York Times’ The Local blog. He has covered protests in Santiago, Chile and New York City. When he’s not causing trouble for the establishment, he’s live-tweeting protests at @AshAgony.

This article is an edited version of one originally published by Waging NonViolence under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

One photo sums up, for me, the extraordinary events that took place in Aberdeen on Friday.

In it, an SNP member is asking an embarrassed-looking young man to autograph his conference pass, saying:

“I’ve never got an autograph before, but I just had to get yours!”

The embarrassed man is Nicky Lowden McCrimmon, and shortly before I took the picture he was being cheered by a standing ovation of almost 300 SNP members.

We were at the ‘Our Land’ meeting – an unofficial fringe event of the SNP’s autumn conference – and earlier that day Nicky had led delegates in a vote to reject the watered-down land reform bill. “When you have radical land reform, then we’ll sign up to it”, he told party leaders.

570 delegates agreed with him, and the motion supporting the current bill was rejected. It’s worth bearing in mind that this almost never happens, and certainly can’t have been expected by SNP leadership.

It means that any amendments which will – undoubtedly, now – be brought forwards in the coming months will have to be very carefully considered. Minister Aileen McLeod, backer of the defeated motion, promised to listen to delegates concerns.

McLeod is the first minister to have land reform explicitly included in her portfolio – a sign of the SNP’s much-hyped commitment to a ‘radical’ land reform plan.

Just 432 people, companies, own half of Scotland

The growing pressure for reform was bolstered by the referendum debate. The stark inequalities that damage Scottish society so much were a frequent topic, and few statistics hit you so hard as ‘432:50’ – around 432 interests own half the private land in Scotland.

That private land, incidentally, makes up 89% of our 19 million acres. Community ownership accounts for 2%. Just one man, the 10th Duke of Buccleuch, owns 1% of Scotland.

Memories of clearances, and current battles with derelict land and evictions give the debate an emotive tone too – sometimes helpful, sometimes not. Land became one of the central issues in the nation-wide discussion on Scotland’s future – helped undoubtedly by the ability of commentators like Lesley Riddoch to coherently and passionately describe exactly why all this mattered so much.

So when, post-referendum, all eyes were on the SNP, they jumped at the chance to be the ‘party of land reform’, even using the word ‘radical’ to describe their agenda. This isn’t a word you would really have heard from this party until very recently, and it’s fair to point out that they’ve not exactly been land reform advocates in the past either.

So campaigners greeted the announcement with curiosity but a fair degree of scepticism. Would the SNP really deliver on an issue that requires bold, redistributive measures?

No more tax haven landowners!

As recommendations and consultation came and went and draft legislation appeared, these sceptical voices were proved right, much to their dismay. Despite the high-pitched fury coming from certain landed interests and their newspapers over ‘Mugabe-style land grabs’, the bill represented nothing of the sort.

The detailed, powerful proposals of the Land Reform Review Group (LRRG) had either appeared watered-down, been dropped from the bill, or never even made it into the public consultation in the first place.

Where was the upper limit on landholdings so strongly recommended by the LRRG? The commitment to establishing a system of land value taxation? The re-establishment of business rates for sporting estates was welcome, as is the (vague) proposal for community purchase of mismanaged land. But these are sticking plasters.

The fact that 750,000 acres of Scotland will still be held in tax havens by a global, untraceable elite, is inexcusable. The removal from the bill of a measure which would have tackled this is partly what’s caused such anger among SNP members and land activists, as now even the UK government have stronger proposals for this problem.

It is suspected that the reluctance is coming from hesitant and risk-averse lawyers in the Scottish government – a poor approach for a government committed to any sort of meangingful social change.

Corporations, said Robin McAlpine, take the attitude that if you aren’t winning, you need better lawyers. We can do that too. The minimum pricing policy has resulted in lengthy court battles for the government – but they were willing to go ahead regardless, because they believed it to be the right thing to do. Why is this courage lacking when it comes to land reform?

Tenant farmers demand a ‘right to buy’

Another group looking for radical reform were tenant farmers. The whole of the agricultural holdings review – a lengthy, complicated process with so much at stake – has been addressed in one chapter of the draft Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2015.

For farmers living under threat of eviction and rent hikes, hoping for the automatic right-to-buy that their European counterparts enjoy, the draft bill was a crushing disappointment.

A stunned silence filled the church hall when tenant farmer Andrew Stoddart addressed the 300-odd attendees of the Our Land meeting. He explained that on 28 November he faces eviction from the land he’d farmed for 22 years, and will receive little compensation despite investing nearly half a million pounds in Colstoun Mains Farm over that period.

The previous night Andrew had appeared on Channel 4 News, interviewed by Alex Thomson as part of his excellent report on land reform in Scotland. Asked what his children will say about the situation, he broke down in tears.

Andrew’s three kids are at the local primary school. His farm employees, who will also have to leave, have children too. The factor and landlord are immensely wealthy men with great influence in the local area. Feudalism, it seems, survives still in East Lothian.

The current land reform bill will not help Andrew and the countless others in his situation who can’t speak out. It won’t change the fact that Scottish land can be bought and sold on a whim by those who hide behind shell companies in the Bahamas. It won’t make land affordable and accessible.

In seeking ‘balance’ and compromise, the SNP have inadvertently sided with those who have the most power – but luckily they’ve got the most incredibly clued-up, strident membership. No one could doubt the strength of feeling on Friday night’s meeting, nor the clear message sent to party leadership.

These SNP activists are a hugely potent force, and they demand a radical land reform bill worthy of its name. The coming months will be very interesting indeed.

Jen Stout is a writer and campaigner from Fair Isle, Shetland. She now lives in Glasgow, writes for Bella Caledonia on various topics, and campaigns with Scottish Land Action Movement. She tweets @jm_stout.

This article was originally published on Bella Caledonia and is republished here by kind permissin of the author.