Summary

Soil health and climate change have a reciprocal relationship. While soil health significantly influences climate change, climate change also impacts soil health. Healthy soils act as carbon sinks, which remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere while degraded soils exacerbate climate change by emitting greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Climate change on its part impacts soil health by altering temperature, precipitation patterns, and extreme weather events which affect soil structure, organic matter, soil water reserves, and nutrient cycling. Climate change poses significant challenges to soil health in Africa, including increased organic matter decomposition, irregular rainfall and its impact on erosion and loss of organic matter, and extreme weather events which exacerbate soil vulnerability. The impacts of climate change on soil health vary across Africa with arid regions being prone to desertification and tropical regions experiencing increased soil leaching and nutrient loss. Therefore, region-specific soil management practices are needed to mitigate the effects of climate change. The Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Action Plan (AFSH-AP) proposed a plan to enhance soil fertility and resilience through appropriate sustainable soil management, innovative technologies, and conducive institutional support for soil health and climate change mitigation at different levels (such as national, regional, and continental levels) in Africa. The present document outlines the strategies which can guide the implementation of soil health for mitigation of climate change at different levels in Africa. Besides the strategies, the document also discusses the factors influencing soil health and requirements for implementing climate-smart soil health practices which need to be taken into consideration when strategizing implementation of soil health practices for mitigating climate change. These factors and requirements include policies and regulations, technical capacity, education and awareness levels, access to information and advisory/extension services, proper planning and prioritization, sustainable resources for implementation, monitoring and evaluation, among others. These factors are critical and need sustained action in Africa where there are challenges such as socio-economic barriers, adverse climate change impacts, low level of soil education, high rate of soil degradation, inadequate technological and IT infrastructure, and inadequate prioritization and planning of soil health management. The document illustrates how these factors and challenges can be integrated in planning implementation and monitoring of soil health practices at the landscape level, national, regional and continental levels. It also shows which aspects of the factors and requirements of soil health can be adequately taken at each implementation level with synergies and catalysis between the different levels. The document also shows the implementation framework for soil health practices which includes three phases: situation analysis and gap-filling strategies, development of implementation tools, and actual implementation and monitoring. This framework aims to ensure effective and sustainable soil health management. It also shows how monitoring the implementation of soil health practices can consider tracking key indicators such as soil carbon stocks, adoption of climate-smart technologies, and policy impacts. These indicators help assess progress and ensure alignment with climate change mitigation goals and should be integrated with the CAADP evaluation and monitoring program.