Page History
Panel discussion on:
Soil carbon sequestration and food security in Sub-Saharan Africa: Synergies and Tradeoffs
24th and 25th of March, 2022, 3-5pm (CET), online
Links to join the meeting via MS Teams: Please click here for the 24th of March and here for the 25th of March
Carbon sequestration in nutrient-deprived agricultural soils in SSA seems to hold a great potential to tackle two of the most pressing issues of our time: food insecurity and climate change. Carbon-rich soils increase the resilience of agricultural systems due to their improved water holding capacity, soil aggregation, and nutrient supply and hence, contribute to food security. At the same time, carbon sequestration in soils is regarded as one important nature-based solution to mitigate climate change. Nevertheless, the concepts proposed by scientists, how to improve soil health and soil fertility vary widely, and large discrepancies exist around the need for chemical inputs to quickly increase food and other biomass production. The different approaches might result in potential trade-offs between high levels of crop yields and carbon sequestration. During the two panel discussions, we would like to have a closer look at different land management practices and their synergies and trade-offs regarding climate change mitigation and current and future food production.
The guiding questions to the panel are:
→ What are the technical and socio-economical potentials of different soil management approaches on the given cropland (ISFM, conservation agriculture, organic agriculture, …) for (A) achieving food security and (B) carbon sequestration?
→ What are the tradeoffs associated with each of those approaches (currently and in a situation of advanced global warming)?
→ Is there a corridor within which those approaches can meet and achieve good results for crop production and eventually food security on one side and carbon sequestration on the other side under different ecological and socio-economical conditions in tropical countries, in particular Sub-Saharan Africa?
24th of March: The scientific point of view
Moderation: Leigh Winowiecki, CIFOR/ICRAF, Kenya
Time (CET) | Program |
15:00 – 15:10 | Welcome and housekeeping: Juliane Wiesenhütter, Paul Luu |
| 15:10-15:25 | Keynote by Prof. Rattan Lal, OSU, USA |
15:25 – 16:25 | Inputs by the panelists: Lydie-Stella Koutika, CRDPI; Congo Bernard Vanlauwe, IITA, Nigeria / Kenya Wellington Mulinge, KALRO, Kenya Gatien Falconnier, CIRAD, France/ Zimbabwe Rolf Sommer, WWF, Germany |
16:25 – 16:50 | Discussion: Questions from the audience If there are urgent questions that cannot be addressed, we may take them into Friday. |
16:50 – 17:00 | Wrap up and closing |
25th of March: The practioners' point of view
Moderation: Niels Thevs, GIZ, Germany
Time (CET) | Program |
15:00 – 15:15 | Welcome and short summary from day 1 |
15:15 - 16:05 | Inputs by the panelists: Pauline Chivenge, APNI, Morocco Barbara Banda, NADPZ, Zambia Francis Kondwani Ngopola, Simpson Foundation, Malawi Upendra Singh ICDF, |
16:05– 16:45 | Discussion: Questions from the audience |
16:45 – 17:00 | Wrap up and closing |
Panelists and background information day 1
Lydie-Stella KOUTIKA
Lydie-Stella Koutika is a soil scientist also acting as Director for Research Centre on Productivity and Sustainability of Industrial Plantations (CRDPI) at Pointe-Noire, Republic of the Congo. She obtained an engineer degree in agronomy with the specialization in soil science and agro chemistry at the Timiriazev Institute at Moscow, Russia in 1991 and a PhD in soil science at the Université Henri Poincaré, (merged to Université de Lorraine), Nancy, France in 1996.
For the duration of her career, she has been fascinated with soil organic matter (carbon and nitrogen) and phosphorus cycling in different ecosystems. During the last decade, she has been working on forest plantations, especially on how to sustain inherently nutrient-poor soils in the Congolese coastal plains.
She has been a “Research in Brussels” fellow (2003-2004), an International Rothamsted Research fellow, UK (2009-2010), an international TWAS-ENEA fellow (September 2018-May 2019), Italy and a member of ‘The Phosphorus Sustainability Research Coordination, Network (P RCN) University of Arizona. She is a member of Scientific and Technical Committee (STC) of the ‘4 per 1000’ “Soils for food security and climate Initiative” since 2016 and member of Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative (GSBI) since 2019. She is a laureate of ‘African Union Kwame Nkrumah Regional Scientific Award for Women’ (2014), The World Academy of Science (TWAS) -Al-Kharafi Prize (2018) and FAO Glinka World Soil Prize (2021). She has published more than 45 peer-reviewed journal papers and some book chapters. She is also a novel writer (<12 books) and is strongly dedicated to her catholic faith and to the development of Africa
Preparatory reading:
View file name Koutika et al. 2021 REEC.pdf height 150
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Bernard Vanlauwe
Wellington Mulinge
Gatien Falconnier
Gatien Falconnier is Systems Agronomist at CIRAD, based in Harare, Zimbabwe. He holds a PhD in Production Ecology and Resource Conservation from the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands. His research focuses on the contribution of agroecological intensification to poverty alleviation, food security, and climate change adaptation and mitigation, in the smallholder context of the Global South. This contribution is assessed using experiments with farmers, participatory research and farm/crop modelling.
Rolf Sommer
Rolf Sommer is director of the department of Agriculture and Land Use Change at WWF in Germany. Previously he worked as Principal Scientist at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Nairobi, Kenya.
Developing and finding sustainable management solutions addressing the complexity of achieving food and nutritional security, sustainable agricultural development, the conservation of nature, biodiversity and agro-ecosystem functioning has been at the core of Rolf’s work ever since. This includes protecting or rehabilitating soil fertility and health at field level, improving the livelihoods of smallholders through improved, competitive and eco-efficient productions systems at farm level, biodiversity, nature and landscape protection and rehabilitation at the watershed /regional level, and carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation at global scale.
Rolf holds a PhD in Agronomy and a MSc in Biology, and in the last 20 years have published over 50 peer-reviewed articles and numerous conference proceedings and online publications (see http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=tAIw8ykAAAAJ&hl=en).
Preparatory reading:
View file name Abera et al 2021 SOC sequestration SLMP Ethiopia.pdf height 150 View file name Epron et al. 2013 FEM.pdf height 150 View file name Mathews et al WWF 2020 Soil and biodiversity.pdf height 150 View file name Nyawira et al 2021 Simulating SOC maize Kenya.pdf height 150
Panelists and background information day 2
Pauline Chiwenge
Pauline Chivenge is a Principal Scientist for the African Plant Nutrition Institute based in Benguerir, Morocco. Pauline earned a PhD in Soils and Biogeochemistry at the University of California, Davis.
Most of Pauline’s research has focused on soil and nutrient management in smallholder farming systems in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. She has led a couple of international projects, working in diverse farming systems on topics that include biogeochemical nutrient cycling, natural resource management, watershed management, carbon sequestration, greenhouse gas emissions and sustainable ecosystem functioning. She has supervised more than 20 MSc and PhD students in Africa and Asia. She and has published more than 35 peer-reviewed journal papers and several book chapters. Pauline is an Associate Editor for Geoderma.
Before joining APNI, Pauline was a Senior Scientist in Soils and Nutrient Management at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines, focusing on sustainable management of soil and nutrients in rice-based cropping systems.
Barbara Hachipuka Banda
Francis Kondwani Ngopola
Upendra Singh
Upendra Singh, PhD, is Vice President Research at the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC). Upendra’s career in soil-plant-nutrient dynamics and fertilizer research spans the globe, with research and training programs in over 36 countries over the past 35 years. Upendra is a globally recognized leader in soil and crop fertility and crop simulation modeling.
Preparatory reading:
View file name IFDC_Overview.pdf height 150
Moderation and welcomming words day 1:
Leigh Winowiecki
Rattan Lal
Juliane Wiesenhütter
Paul Luu
Dr. Paul Luu is an agronomist specialized in tropical agronomy. He began his career in the field, leading agronomic research projects in St. Lucia, Sri Lanka and Tonga for six years before joining the International Relations Department of the French Ministry of Agriculture.
In 2011, Paul Luu was appointed director of Agropolis International, the international association representing the scientific community “Agronomy – Environment – Biodiversity – Water” of the Occitanie region. In particular, he contributed to the creation of the CGIAR Consortium in Montpellier, an international organization dedicated to agricultural research for the benefit of the poorest people on the planet. He joined the organization in September 2013 as Liaison Officer with the French authorities, then as Protocol Officer.
Since September 2016, Dr. Paul Luu has been Executive Secretary of the “4 per 1000” initiative launched at COP 21 in Paris.
Moderation day 2:
Niels Thevs
