How to harmonise public and private datasets for mapping and monitoring soil carbon dynamics

This document is part of the EU-funded project CREDIBLE, Grant Agreement 101112951, and it captures the main outputs of the first round of conversations held within the Focus Group on “How to harmonise public and private datasets for mapping and monitoring soil carbon dynamics?” (FG3.1). The main goal of this Focus Group is to establish an exchange of ideas on the topic of voluntary and regulated carbon farming certifications and their interactions and roles in supporting carbon farming. A major barrier to the diffusion of carbon farming is the establishment of a robust carbon farming certification system, including a public system to certify private companies that produce and sell carbon credit certificates. Both farmers and companies willing to purchase these certificates require a publicly regulated certification system. Different Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) systems are currently used, based on varied approaches in terms of modelling, analytical and estimation methods, and sampling protocols. Each MRV system implies a different level of uncertainty, which is rarely explicitly declared. Furthermore, data produced by the private sector are usually not accounted for in national reporting due to the lack of systems for data quality assurance, standardisation, harmonisation, and data sharing. An EU-wide harmonisation is therefore needed towards a harmonised system of national reporting across the EU. The objective of the Focus Group is to coordinate among different initiatives currently active on the topic, such as EJPSOIL, MARVIC, MRV4SOC, ICOS, eLTER, EUROSOLAN, SOILWISE, and BONARES, among others, and with JRC-EUSO, in order to align with the objectives of the European Commission.