Soils take the stage for a day at COP28
“Soils: Where food begins” will be the theme of this year’s World Soil Day on December 5. In line with this theme, the Coalition of Action for Soil Health (CA4SH) will celebrate the day at the COP28 Food Systems Pavilion by organizing a full day of events dedicated to this critical but often overlooked ecosystem. The day will end with a dinner on the margins of COP for senior leaders working within the soil health space, to stress the importance of soils as an asset and garner commitments and pledges to further the adoption of sustainable soil management practices at the global level.
While soil health may at first seem purely an environmental matter, it cuts across many, if not all, of the current global challenges we are all facing: climate change, food security, water security, and biodiversity degradation and loss.
Soils are the basis of life, and soil health is the foundation of sustainable and regenerative food systems. Healthy soils are critical for increasing food and nutrition security, improving livelihoods, meeting climate change mitigation and adaptation goals, enhancing above and below-ground biodiversity, restoring ecosystems and providing many more benefits to us all. However, they face an unprecedented crisis: top soil is being lost at an annual rate of approximately 36 billion tons, and global cropland erosion has reached 17 billion tons. This results in $300 billion in lost agricultural production annually.
This context prompted the creation of CA4SH in 2021 – a key outcome of the UN Food Systems Summit – in order to catalyze multi-stakeholder action for the recognition and inclusion of soils across policy landscapes worldwide.
While CA4SH used the first Soil Health Day at COP27 to raise awareness of the state of soils and make a call for a global Soil Health Resolution, at this year’s COP28, the coalition members will convey an even stronger sense of urgency of action. Along with showcasing the concrete actions taken by governments, growers, financial institutions, the private sector and more to accelerate and scale the adoption of sustainable soil management practices, the coalition will seek to catalyze dialogue, innovation and motivation toward scaling healthy soil practices the world over. They will explore how to enable soil as strategic tool to deliver on the Paris Agreement; the benefits soils bring for nature, people and climate; the collaborative partnerships required to innovate our approach to soil health; what regenerative agriculture proposes for holistic and long-term climate action and what growers need for long-term climate resilience.
The overarching objective of CA4SH is to galvanize support for the alignment of UN Conventions around this key issue and ensure that soil health becomes a critical element of every relevant UN declaration.
CA4SH will conclude World Soil Day with a High-Level Dinner on the margins of COP28 to build on the exchanges of the day and identify the technologies, innovative approaches and comprehensive services that will help improve agricultural management, food systems transformation and, ultimately, ensure food security- in line with the 2023 theme “Where food begins”.
To find out more and follow the events of the day, please follow IFA and CA4SH on LinkedIn and X:
LinkedIn: international-fertilizer-association-ifa and coalition-of-action-4-soil-health-ca4sh
Twitter: @FertilizerNews and @ca4sh_global
The full program of IFA events at COP 28 is also available here.
