Sadhguru Issues Rallying Cry on Earth Day

As people around the world mark Earth Day, an Indian spiritual leader and environmental campaigner has warned that humans could go extinct if significant action is not taken to combat climate change in the coming years.

Sadhguru, a yogi and mystic with a combined following of more than 16 million on Instagram and X, said the disasters fueled by climate change today "will seem minuscule compared to what could happen in the next 15, 20 years if we continue with the current level of human activity."

He told Newsweek that the world is facing a future where floods, cyclones and droughts are common, and such events will stifle agricultural productivity and threaten food security.

"Once there are food shortages, there will be civil unrest, which will he uncontrollable," he said. "And when biodiversity is lost, it means the very basis and foundation stones of our existence are being undone."

Sadhguru said if "significant action does not happen in the next couple of decades, it is not the planet that is in peril—it is human beings who are in peril. Whether we come out of this consciously or a disaster brings us back to our senses is left to us."

Sadhguru, who founded the nonprofit Isha Foundation, argues that while managing fossil fuel emissions is important, fighting the degradation of soil should be the first step countries take when it comes to tackling climate change because it is "the easiest step."

Much of the world's soil is plowed land that is left unproductive, he said, and a huge source of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. A United Nations report in 2022 estimated that over 40 percent of the world's land is already degraded. Without significant change, an area the size of South America will be added to that amount by 2050, the report said.

Sadhguru argues that the effects of climate change could be "significantly" mitigated in the next 15 years just by revitalizing agricultural soil.

"Whether you want to fix or reverse climate change, or do carbon sequestration, or limit the temperatures rising in the world, or resolve water scarcity, we need to fix the soil," he said.

Sadhguru notes that when people hear "carbon" they immediately think of "a problematic gas in the atmosphere."

"But all life on this planet—trees, animals, human beings—is carbon-based," he said. "Carbon is the basis of who we are. The issue is only that it is not where it should be. The maximum amount of carbon was always in the soil, but now, too much of it is in the atmosphere. This is why, if we want to address climate change, we have to realize the significance of soil.

"Soil contains three times the carbon that the atmosphere contains. If soil is under green cover and has sufficient organic matter, it absorbs atmospheric carbon. In fact, healthy soil is one of the best carbon sinks on the planet because when there is green cover, photosynthesis transforms atmospheric carbon into carbon sugars and puts it into the soil through a sophisticated exchange with soil microorganisms."

Sadhguru says changing the way the billions of hectares of agricultural land on the planet is managed "could mitigate 27 percent of the climate issues."

Soil degradation "is a global scale disaster" that "can be turned around simply with a committed focus," he said. "It does not need any absolutely new technology or trillions of dollars. What it needs is a committed approach from the governments."

The Save Soil movement founded by Sadhguru has been calling for governments to require agricultural soil to contain a minimum of between 3 to 6 percent of organic content.

The Save Soil website calls for a three-pronged strategy that involves incentivizing farmers to increase organic matter, making carbon credits accessible to farmers and preferential marketing for produce from soil with higher organic matter.

"If we have any commitment to life on this planet, if we have any commitment to future generations, this is a must-do for every nation," Sadhguru said. "So, the first and foremost thing is to enshrine soil and ecological regeneration as a part of every nation's policy."

However, some experts have questioned Save Soil's policy goals and researchers have also argued that estimates of the amount of carbon that could sequestered in soil could be unrealistic.

In a letter to the Global Change Biology journal last year, a group of researchers said estimates at the higher end about soil carbon sequestration were "unrealistic."

They noted that boosting organic matter in soil has long-term benefits, but said it was unlikely to have a substantial effect on mitigating climate change.

"It is critical to quantify any potential trade-offs and to provide realistic evaluations of the practical, infrastructural, social, or financial limitations to the uptake of such practices," said Gabriel Moinet, the letter's lead author and a soil biologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. "However, overly optimistic estimates for current technical potential can be highly misleading for policymakers and may hamper rather than aid the fight against global warming," he said.

In response, Praveena Sridhar, Save Soil's chief technical officer, told Newsweek: "We completely agree that estimates of healthy agricultural soil's impacts should not be exaggerated, nor is soil the only solution to climate change.

"That being said, conservative estimates of restoring our agricultural soil health, including data from (the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization), point to a 27% sequestration of atmospheric CO2 needed to keep us below 2 degrees (Celsius) of global warming. To make this happen, we will need to increase organic matter to ensure we maintain healthy, living soils.

"Prioritizing policy support and financial incentives for a transition to regenerative agriculture can also transform the lives of millions of farmers across the globe, who are increasingly on the frontlines of climate shocks."

Update 4/23/24, 10:55 a.m. ET: This article has been updated to add comment from Praveena Sridhar.