Soil Processes and Climate Solutions: From Carbon Cycling to Climate-Smart Land Management

Regenerative agriculture has become a prominent umbrella for farming strategies intended to rebuild soil function, sequester carbon and improve resilience, yet its climate claims remain difficult to evaluate because the term combines practices with different biophysical mechanisms and greenhouse-gas consequences. This critical narrative review examines regenerative agriculture through a soil-process lens, asking when management changes can generate additional and durable soil organic carbon, whether those gains survive accounting for nitrous oxide, methane and displaced emissions, and how the same processes influence resilience to climatic stress. Literature published from 1 January 2000 to 8 July 2026 was considered, prioritising peer-reviewed field evidence, quantitative syntheses and methodologically informative reviews. The synthesis shows that the strongest case for regenerative management is not a universal practice package but the deliberate manipulation of carbon inputs, disturbance, nutrient cycling, rooting depth, soil cover and water flow. Increased plant-derived carbon inputs, continuous living roots, diversified rotations, perennial phases, agroforestry and appropriately sourced organic amendments can increase soil organic carbon under many conditions. Reduced tillage can improve surface soil condition, but whole-profile carbon gains are less consistent and should not be inferred from concentration changes in shallow layers. Carbon accumulation is constrained by baseline depletion, mineral protection capacity, climate, texture, depth, management duration and eventual saturation. Climate mitigation is further conditional because nitrous oxide from nitrogen-rich amendments or wet microsites and methane from livestock can offset carbon benefits. Evidence for climate resilience is comparatively strongest for improved infiltration, aggregate stability, erosion resistance and, in some systems, yield stability under drought; direct gains in plant-available water are more variable. The review therefore argues that regenerative agriculture should be evaluated as a context-specific soil-process portfolio, with net greenhouse-gas accounting, whole-profile carbon measurement, permanence, additionality and productivity included in claims. Research priorities centre on long-term factorial field experiments, harmonised carbon-fraction and flux measurements, causal tests of resilience, and measurement–reporting–verification systems that reward demonstrable net climate benefit rather than practice adoption alone.