National research programme Carbon and Continental ecosystems (PEPR FairCarboN)
The FairCarboN programme aims to mobilize the French scientific community studying carbon in continental ecosystems. With a budget of €40 million over 6 years, FairCarboN aims to refine the contribution of continental ecosystems to climate change mitigation, which is essential to achieving the Paris Agreement's climate goal.
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The Paris Agreement aims to limit the increase in global temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to drastically reduce emissions and reach carbon neutrality in the second half of the 21st century. Continental ecosystems (forests, grasslands, cultivated fields, freshwater ecosystems, mountainous, coastal, and peri-urban areas) will play a crucial role in reducing emissions and absorbing incompressible emissions (carbon sinks in soils and biomass).
This contribution must be achieved while preserving natural ecosystems and ensuring the sustainability of managed and semi-natural ecosystems, in order to maintain or increase their capacity to provide other ecosystem services. This requires advances in our understanding of carbon dynamics in terrestrial ecosystems.
Led by CNRS and INRAE, the programme will capitalize on the dynamism of the national community distributed across different institutions, as well as on the strengths of research facilities in metropolitan and overseas territories, and internationally, particularly in Southern countries. FairCarboN aims to elevate France's scientific leadership to the highest international level on this strategic theme. The programme is also open to stakeholders and aims to provide expertise and support for public policies. The mobilization of this broad community through this ambitious programme is a necessary condition for determining the potential contribution of continental ecosystems to climate change mitigation.
The FairCarboN PEPR has three main scientific objectives:
- To overcome the knowledge gaps on key processes governing the carbon cycle, its couplings with other biogeochemical cycles (nitrogen, phosphorus, water), and their responses to global changes, as well as to evaluate the ecological, agronomic, and socio-economic levers to be activated for the transition towards carbon neutrality.
- To provide the scientific community and stakeholders with a new generation of validated numerical models that can simulate the evolution of carbon stocks and fluxes in soils and vegetation at different scales.
- To develop, test, and evaluate scenarios of land-use change and resource management practices in territories that respond to climate neutrality challenges, in consultation with various stakeholders (civil society, NGOs, policymakers), and to support their implementation at local and national scales.
For more information
- FairCarboN, an exploratory Priority Research Programme and Infrastructure (PEPR) with sights set on carbon neutrality, press release on the occasion of the inauguration of PEPR (04/11/22)