Resource Library
Feature Resource:
Youth Initiatives for Scaling Soil Health: Advice from #Youth4Soil Global Advocates
The Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH) is a multistakeholder partnership committed to scaling soil health, globally. CA4SH places a high degree of importance on the role of youth as innovators and experts toward scaling global soil health. Youth are engaged through the #Youth4Soil movement, which includes a working group, mentorship opportunities, and support for speaking and engagement. We also want to highlight youth approaches to advocating for global soil health.
In April 2024, Roël D. Houdanon, Founder & Chief Technical Advisor, Land and Health Association shared an op-ed highlighting the role of youth in defending soil health. He presented several avenues for youth to get involved in scaling soil health:
Awareness Raising
Innovation & Technology
Policy Advocacy
Community Engagement
Education
Science & Research
We reached out to youth partners to learn about their individual approaches to scaling soil health through these thematic action areas.
These are their responses.
The Road Ahead for Soil Health Action: A Call to Action from the 2024 CA4SH Webinar Series
The Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH) is a multi stakeholder partnership committed to scaling soil health, globally. CA4SH ’s membership base comprises stakeholders from member states, the private sector, research institutions, civil society, farmer organisations, multilateral organisations, and NGOs.
To leverage the wealth of knowledge and experiences from across our partners in addressing key challenges currently constraining farmers to implement healthy soil practices, CA4SH held a three-part virtual Webinar Series in early 2024. The 2024 Webinar Series was held over three sessions under the topics of bringing soil health into policy, science & knowledge for improving and monitoring soil health, and financing healthy soil practices. The objectives were to explore soil-related themes and share experiences with a focus on tailoring and scaling successful methodologies.
This brief summarizes the sessions, and coallates lessons learned, calls to action, and opportunities for scaling these approaches to align action on soil ahead of the 2024 Rio Conventions.
Lessons Learned from COP28: Advocating for Soil Health in Multinational Fora
Soil health was formally recognized in the COP28 UAE Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, and Climate Action, in part because of the advocacy approach taken by CA4SH and our partners. In this brief, CA4SH partners and member states who engaged in this process lay out key lessons learned while advocating for soil in the context of the UNFCCC COPs, with recommendations for scaling this approach in other contexts.