Assessment of soil integration in nationally determined contributions and guidance for quantifying ex-ante soil organic carbon stock changes in national policies using IPCC default methodologies

By 2025, Parties will have to submit to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) a new or updated nationally determined contribution (NDC), with more ambitious climate commitments as compared to the previous one. It is thus expected that Parties will raise their ambition regarding their actions on GHG emissions reductions and carbon removals, which in the land sector focus on the living biomass, dead organic matter and soil organic matter pools. This study aimed at understanding how soils and their management practices are integrated into the current NDCs, and how this information might be used to quantify ex-ante climate change mitigation potential. This study found that while some actions provide sufficient level of information to quantify their climate change mitigation potential using the IPCC tier 1 methodologies, thus default carbon stocks values (biomass and soil), few Parties actually included this data in their NDCs. However, this study provided examples of such tier 1 quantification using the Nationally Determined Contribution Expert tool (NEXT) in ex-ante analyses. This type of ex-ante analyses is considered to be a starting point for discussions and collaboration between policy makers and technical experts involved in formulating NDCs and developing national greenhouse gas inventories. These analyses are also essential for improving data collection, increasing accuracy (thus decreasing uncertainties), strengthening credibility and feasibility, and paving the way for enhancing environmental ambitions and building countries’ capacities.