According to United Nations climate scientists, $300 billion could stop the rise in greenhouse gases and buy up to 20 years of time to fix global warming. The sum is not to fund green technologies or finance a moon-shot solution to emissions, but to use simple, age-old practices to lock millions of tons of carbon back into an overlooked and over-exploited resource: the soil. Rene Castro Salazar, an assistant director general at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said that land around the world that has been degraded by misuse, overgrazing, deforestation and other largely human factors. Returning that land to pasture, food crops or trees would convert enough carbon into biomass to stabilize emissions of CO2, the biggest greenhouse gas, for 15-20 years, giving the world time to adopt carbon-neutral technologies. Eduardo Mansur, director of the land and water division at the FAO, said the heart of the idea is to tackle the growing problem of desertification – the degradation of dry land to the point where it can support little life.

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