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.

Countless CA4SH partners attended the UNFCCC COP29 this month, so we reached out to ask how it went!

Despite this being an incredibly busy time of year, we received several responses from partners who highlighted the highs, the lows, and what still needs to be done to embed soil health more deeply in agenda set forth at the Rio Conventions.

Here are their reflections, in their own words.

CA4SH is a multi stakeholder partnership of member states, the private sector, research institutions, civil society, farmer organizations, multilateral organizations, NGOs, and more. Drawing on this wealth of knowledge, we organized the first installation of our 2024 Webinar Series: The road ahead for soil health action.

Co-organizers of the dialogue on soil health – the Parliamentary Committee for the Development of Family Farms of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland, Mateusz Ciasnocha and the European Carbon Farmers – inform about the success of the policy event which took place at the Parliament of the Republic of Poland on Wednesday, 28 June 2023. The event was titled Soil health as critical for the health of farms, the health of the society and the health of the homeland and brought together a multitude of stakeholders to discuss the European Mission for Soil Health and its relevance in Poland.