CA4SH Co-Leads Join the World Economic Forum Future Council on Soils for 2025-2026
This month, the World Economic Forum (WEF) announced the 2025-2026 cohort of the Global Future Council on Soils including Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH) Co-Leads Dr Rattan Lal and Dr Leigh Ann Winowiecki on its distinguished panel.
The WEF Network of Global Future Councils is a multistakeholder, interdisciplinary network of experts who convene to inform the initiatives and priorities of WEF under 36 core themes underpinning development, technology, environment and innovation.
The Global Future Council on Soils aims to address the issue of soil and land degradation; one-third of soil is already degraded, and this number is rising quickly due to unsustainable land management practices. The Council will explore collaborative approaches to halting and reversing this trend that are equitable and transformative.
CA4SH was launched from the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit Call to Action for coalitions to accelerate food systems transformation and promote nature-positive innovation. Since then, CA4SH has grown to include more than 260 multistakeholder members and countless partners working to scale global soil health. Among our many activities, the Coalition has launched thematic working groups, the #Youth4Soil initiative, knowledge co-creation streams, and collaborated on innumerable dialogues related to scaling soil health through integrated, multistakeholder action (e.g., at the Rio Conventions, in webinars, at the Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Summit).
Positioning soil health as a unifier for achieving the global goals of reversing land degradation, adapting to the climate crisis, achieving food and nutrition security, safeguarding biodiversity, restoring ecosystems, and upholding rural livelihoods, CA4SH is built on a foundation of transforming the future of our planet to one that is more resilient and equitable in line with the objectives of the WEF Global Future Council on Soils. The appointment of CA4SH Co-Leads Dr Rattan Lal and Dr Leigh Ann Winowiecki to the Council is a key opportunity for advancing this agenda, leveraging their distinguished expertise as scientists and advocates for scaling soil health policy, finance and practices that put farmers first.
About Dr Rattan Lal
Dr Lal is a Distinguished University Professor of Soil Science at Ohio State University (OSU). He is the Director of the CFAES Dr. Rattan Lal Carbon Management and Sequestration Center (C-MASC), hosted by OSU. In 2020, Dr Lal was awarded the World Food Prize for his extensive research into soil-centred approaches for food and nutrition security and combatting climate change. He also received the 2019 Japan Prize for his humanitarian approach to scientific research. Dr Lal is a co-Founder of CA4SH and sits on the Steering Committee, and he is appointed co-Chair of the WEF Global Future Council on Soils for 2025-2026.
About Dr Leigh Ann Winowiecki
Dr Leigh Ann Winowiecki is the Soil and Land Health Global Research Lead for CIFOR-ICRAF based in Nairobi, Kenya. Her research focuses on scaling farmer-centered landscape restoration by understanding drivers of degradation and quantifying the impacts of land management on soil health. In 2024, she joined the inaugural cohort of Top Agri-food Pioneers (TAP) from the World Food Prize Foundation; Dr Winowiecki was nominated for her distinguished research portfolio and for her leadership of CA4SH, which she co-founded. She is on the Board of Directors of the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC) and the Varda Foundation. She aims to increase accessibility and availability of soil health data to drive evidence-based decision-making for improving soil health interventions, and leads CA4SH stakeholder engagement in high-level policy dialogue including the Rio Conventions, the Aim for Climate Summit, the UN Food Systems Summit, and the Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Summit, where she advocated for healthy soil practices as a key enabler for food systems transformation.
CA4SH is open to all interested stakeholders committed to improving soil health.
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