The Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH) is rooted in the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Since our official launch in 2021, CA4SH has amassed a membership of over 200 multistakeholder organizations and collaborated with countless partners.

This year, the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNCCD was focused on a people-centred approach to accelerating action on land and drought resilience, themed Our Land. Our Future.

Since healthy soil is essential to land and drought resilience, and provides co-benefits that link with all 17 of the Sustainable Development Goals, the CA4SH network came together for a record engagement at COP16 to advocate for scaling global soil health.

June 3 to 13, 2024 - The 60th session of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Subsidiaries Bodies (SB60) took place in Bonn, Germany. Also called the 2024 Bonn Climate Change Conference, it brought together an estimated 6,000 attendees to prepare and shape the agenda for COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan later this year. This year, we contributed to several side events led by partners to elevate the importance of soil health.

To bridge actions between the UNFCCC and UNCBD, CA4SH and partners WWF, UNEP,  the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT, CGIAR, CIFOR-ICRAF, Biovision and the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade co-hosted a roundtable luncheon on the sidelines of the UNCBD Twenty-sixth meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (STTA26). The luncheon was called Food Systems Transformation & Land Use Change: Unlocking the potential for enhanced synergies and finance through NBSPAs and NDCs, where attendees joined a group discussion on how aligning the UNFCCC and UNCBD could unlock and enhance synergies and scale-up financial support at the national level to enable food systems transformation.