This book provides useful and detailed coverage of many issues around the area of the mitigation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) by carbon sequestration. Agriculture is responsible for 12% of anthropogenic emissions (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC). Nitrous oxide and methane provide the majority of impacts, nearly 90% of mitigation opportunities are provided by carbon (IPCC). This book's premise is that farmers could benefit from enhancing carbon sink potentials of land by effective management by direct payments or through carefully targeted development.

The soil pool is double the size of the atmospheric carbon pool and 1.5 times that of standing biomass. Agriculture has caused huge losses from this soil pool since its advent. Techniques highlighted show that increased sequestration into the soil pool often benefits rural poverty in fragile ecosystems. Role of carbon trading is examined in encouraging positive carbon management. Agricultural sinks are excluded from the Clean Development Mechanisms and unlikely to be eligible under Kyoto2, but many techniques provide a ‘win⁴’ for mitigation, adaptation, poverty alleviation and soil conservation.

The authors question the underlying assumptions of carbon trading being a ‘real deal’ and also the ‘real additionality’, sequestration permanence and difficulties of monitoring and verification. Climate change effects on agriculture are covered, as are global and local contexts, the complexity of relations between different GHGs and the need for further research into the ‘unanswered questions’ of sequestration. More coverage of opportunities for the management of other GHGs would have been useful, as would increased emphasis on some of the other ‘unquestioned answers’ in this complex area.