Headline: Soils as a Key to Sustainable Development: Register for the Global Soil Week by 2 April

16.03.2015

In the United Nations International Year of Soils the IASS is hosting the third Global Soil Week from 19 to 23 April 2015 in Berlin. The Global Soil Week is an international forum and knowledge platform, where the working language is English. As in previous years, this year’s event will bring together around 450 participants from 70 countries with different cultural and professional backgrounds, from high-level policymakers to scientists, farmers, civil society actors and artists. The motto of the third Global Soil Week is “Soil. The Substance of Transformation”. To participate, please register by 2 April.

Over the past months, people from around the world have worked together to create a lively and exciting programme with interactive Dialogue Sessions, Discussion Forums, Working Groups, Open Space Sessions and the “1 Hectare” open-air exhibition. The unique format of the Global Soil Week encourages knowledge sharing among the most diverse participants and creates a space for lively discussions with an international focus. Topics of discussion at this year’s Global Soil Week will include advancing land degradation, virtual land take due to our consumer habits, the goal of a land-degradation neutral world, land-grabbing, implementation and monitoring of the Sustainable Development Goals, new and traditional land rehabilitation methods, as well as human rights and sustainable land governance.

The Global Soil Week is an opportunity to put soil and land on the political agenda as prerequisites for sustainable development. Countless demands are being placed on the world’s soils. But soil is a finite resource, so a lot is at stake. Soils will be crucial to providing enough water, energy and food to the nine million people that will populate the Earth in 2050. Thanks to the success of the Global Soil Weeks in 2012 and 2013, an offshoot of the event will take place in Brazil in March 2015 (25–27 March) and a first African Soil Week is currently being planned.

The partners of the Global Soil Week are: the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS), the European Commission, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Development and Cooperation, the German Agency for International Development (GIZ) and the German Environmental Agency.

For further information, see:

Registration for journalists:

16.03.2015