ABSTRACT
While visiting Roma the first week of January 2015, I accidentally discovered the giant banner slung over the Food and Agriculture Organization's world headquarters announcing the United Nations’ “2015 International Year of Soils.” I figured that the UN had selected this particular topic to connect with “Feeding the Planet. Energy for Life,” the theme of Expo Milano 2015, set to open four months later and welcome 20 million visitors. In my mind, these two events had been devised to pave the way for COP21, that year's pièce de résistance, where 196 parties were expected to meet in Paris to sign the accord committing the world's nations to limit global warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius and to achieve zero emissions sometime between 2030 and 2050. As I shall soon describe, none of these events transpired as I envisioned, despite the fact that fully half of the 158 Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) drafted ahead of COP21 “ascribed importance to the agricultural sector. In particular, African and Asian countries are aiming for more sustainable uses of soil and land. In fact, soil remained mostly invisible in those contexts.”
