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Global Soil Week 2017 (GSW 2017) convened from 22-24 May 2017 in Berlin, Germany, and addressed the theme, ‘Catalyzing SDG Implementation through a Land and Soil Review.’ Attended by almost 300 participants, the meeting aimed to develop policy messages as input to the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) scheduled to convene in July 2017.
Following the opening plenary, participants held three thematic workshops to explore the following topics: ‘Sustaining and upscaling achievements of sustainable land management (SLM) initiatives’; ‘Right to (defend) land: strengthening accountability at the local level through thematic reviews’; and ‘Protecting land resources for shared prosperity.’ The workshops were informed by the experiences of some of the 44 countries that will present voluntary national reviews at this year’s HLPF, as well as expert contributions.
The two-part “Thematic Review LAB” took place on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning to pilot contributions to the sub-set of seven Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that will be the focus of the HLPF’s thematic review in 2017. The LAB aimed to, inter alia: identify progress, gaps and synergies in implementing the 2030 Agenda; synthesize knowledge, and discuss tradeoffs and synergies in SDG implementation;; discuss concrete policy actions needed to achieve the 2030 Agenda; and highlight opportunities for further collaboration and partnerships.
On Wednesday morning, participants discussed five draft policy messages to the HLPF that emerged from the first two days’ discussions and proposed additional changes to be included in the final conference outcome.
During the final plenary session, a high-level speakers reflected on the methodology introduced at GSW 2017 and provided further inputs on how to enhance the usefulness of such preparatory processes to the overall monitoring of the SDGs.
Closing the meeting, the co-moderators thanked the German government for offering to continue its support for the Global Soil Week, and announced that the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) will hand over coordination of the conferences to TMGThinkTank for Sustainability. During a brief ceremony, Klaus Töpfer, initiator of the Global Soil Week, received a Distinguished Service Award from the International Union of Soil Scientists (IUSS).
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