Third Global Soil Week (GSW) 2015 - “Soil. The Substance of Transformation”

The Third Global Soil Week (GSW) 2015 opened on Monday, 20 April, with a screening of Soil Movie 2.0. Klaus Töpfer, Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) Executive Director, welcomed participants and underlined that soil is at the center of the transformation needed to address a variety of environmental challenges. Noting that this transformation is a global challenge, he called for visionary target on soils in the context of the sustainable development goals (SDG) process. A panel of experts and practitioners discussed linkages between sustainable soil management and the SDGs, including experiences from Bangladesh, Kenya and the EU, as well as perspectives from the FAO and UNCCD.

A joint IASS-UNEP press conference was held at lunchtime to launch the report “The Role of Biomass in the SDGs: A Reality Check and Governance Implications.” The report assesses the coherence of the SDGs and their targets with regard to soil and biomass. It shows that that projected demand for biomass under the SDGs will exceed the quantities that can be produced with currently available arable land.

In the afternoon, participants convened in eight interactive dialogue sessions to further discuss linkages between soils and the post-2015 agenda, including the following issues: the role of soils for food security and sustainable food systems; the challenge of biomass within the post-2015 development agenda; overriding the urban/non-urban divide in the new urban agenda; mitigation and adaptation to climate change through sustainable land management; linking sustainable land management and the coastal and marine environments; the contribution of land degradation neutrality to climate change mitigation and adaptation; economics of land degradation; and land rehabilitation for food security.