COP 28 Official Side Event: Natural carbon sequestration — Leveraging soils for mitigation, storage, and biodiversity benefits

Baani joined The Climate Center in June of 2022 as the Natural Sequestration Initiative Manager. In this role, she leads the organization’s work on advancing nature-based carbon sequestration solutions to fight the climate crisis while protecting our natural lands and delivering a multitude of co-benefits for both the environment and affected communities. She also leads the organization’s efforts in policies addressing the emergent mechanical carbon dioxide removal market. Prior to The Climate Center, Baani worked as a consultant with the Community Alliance with Family Farmers where she assisted small and mid-scale farmers with funding opportunities to remain operational during emergencies like drought, wildfire, and the pandemic.

Dr. Jack Hannam is the current President of the British Society of Soil Science, and a soil scientist specializing in soil data, digital soil mapping, and soil health. Her research focuses on digital soil mapping, applications of conservation agriculture to improve soil health, developing decision support tools for planning soil and landscape decisions and the application of application of national and local scale soil data for policy and business applications. Dr. Hannam leads the LandIS team at Cranfield University, who are responsible for the national soil data for England and Wales. She is also vice chair of the International Union of Soil Science (IUSS) Division 1: Soil in Space and Time.

Karen Ross was appointed Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture in January of 2019 by Governor Gavin Newsom. In re-appointing Secretary Ross, Governor Newsom cited her unmatched leadership experience in agricultural issues nationally, internationally, and in California, in areas including environmental stewardship, climate change adaptation, and trade. Secretary Ross was initially appointed in 2011. She owns 800 acres of a family farm where her brother, a fourth-generation farmer, is mentoring a new farmer in growing no-till wheat and feed grains, incorporating cover crops and rotational grazing for beef production. Secretary Ross has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and is a graduate of the Nebraska Ag Leadership Program. She has served on numerous boards and committees in California agriculture and with various academic institutions.

Dr. Leigh Ann Winowiecki is the Global Research Lead for Soil and Land Health at CIFOR-ICRAF, based in Nairobi, Kenya. A soil scientist, her research focuses on scaling farmer-centered landscape restoration, understanding drivers of degradation, and quantifying the impacts of land management on soil health Since 2009 she has co-developed and implemented the Land Degradation Surveillance Framework (LDSF) in over 40 countries across the tropics. The framework is a systematic methodology to assess soil health, land degradation, and vegetation dynamics and track restoration efforts across landscapes. She has published widely on soil organic carbon, ecosystem services, and land degradation across sub-Saharan Africa and the tropics, including a coherent set of open-access datasets. She co-founded the Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH), which aims to catalyze investments in soil health for human well-being and climate. She is on the Scientific Task Force and the Monitoring Task Force for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration as well as the Scientific Steering Committee for the Global Soil Health Programme. She co-leads the Landscape Restoration Transformative Partnership Platform. She is also a founding Board Member of the International Union of Agroforestry (IUAF).