The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and World Agroforestry (ICRAF) joined forces in 2019, leveraging nearly five decades of trusted science on the role of forests and trees in solving critical global challenges.
The first-ever food systems pavilion brings soil to the limelight
The just concluded COP27 at Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt 6–18 November 2022 saw the first-ever Food Systems Pavilion to be featured at a UN Climate Change Conference. This Pavilion represented an enormous opportunity to ensure that the health of the planet’s soil – and with it, all the nutritional, ecosystem, and climate benefits soil provides – was considered by policymakers in discussions at the global event.
Although it’s the very basis of the world’s food systems – as well as the third-largest carbon sink – soil has never been officially recognized at COP. This emphasis on food systems and resources, brought to limelight the issues of soil health, food and nutrition security, and the critical need for urgent action to promote both.
“Let’s remember: soil is the absolute foundation of life on land, on our planet,” said Leigh Ann Winowiecki, a soil systems scientist for the Centre for International Forestry Research – World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) and co-leader of the Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH), one of the host organizations of the Pavilion.
CA4SH, a multi-stakeholder platform launched at the UN Food Systems Summit in 2021, drafted an urgent Soil Health Resolution for governments to endorse and was issued publicly during COP27. With government leadership and multi-stakeholder partnerships, co-signing such a declaration is critical, argues CA4SH, for the full contributions of soil to be realized.
Related stories
Agro Live Redirect Block
hii redirect