Abstract

Soil ecosystems - according to Mirko Migliavacca and Luca Rigamonti - play a key role in the debate on climate change and their sustainability, as well as a wiser management of land use changes, is high in the political agenda at both the international and local level. Many scholars believe that the changes in land use and the poor management of the territory are two of the main causes of the increase of greenhouse gas emissions or, at least, of the reduced CO2 sequestration potential of soil ecosystems. After reviewing the vulnerability of the agricultural areas and analysing some points of the Kyoto protocol and the Bali road map, the authors state that the scientific and economic communities are required to provide stakeholders with increasingly clear data and uncertainty margins as a basis for their mitigation policies in a very critical area, in particular for the economies of developing countries.