Uploaded December 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Healthy soils are the foundation of sustainable and regenerative food systems and provide several vital ecosystem services. Sequestering carbon in soils, for example, can have multiple benefits for climate change mitigation and adaptation, food and nutrition security, biodiversity, and water resilience.
However, there are few policies that incentivize farmers to invest in practices to improve soil health and invest in nature based solutions (NbS). This session will build on a set of policy briefs produced in December 2022 from Ethiopia, Kenya, Ghana, Mali, Senegal and Zambia that highlight opportunities for the inclusion of soil health and soil organic carbon (SOC) into the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). To mitigate climate change measures to improve soil health and SOC needs to be integrated in updated NDCs and a better linkage to commitments within the UNCCD Land Degradation Neutrality targets (LDN) is required. The session will present concrete policy measures for soil health in NDCs based on the NDC guidance tool for food systems. This includes a systematic inclusion of NbS across climate, environment, and agricultural strategies and policies.
The session will showcase concrete examples from countries and discuss challenges and opportunities.
Session objectives
Showcase examples of successful implementation of actions for soil health, including nature-based solutions (NbS)
Present opportunities from policy analyses for integrating soil health into NDCs and LDN
Bring together actors from government, research, private sector, and development to scale healthy soil practices and NbS; and
Garner support to implement robust, simple, yet accurate soil health and NbS monitoring.
Healthy soils are the foundation of sustainable and regenerative food systems and provide several vital ecosystem services. Sequestering carbon in soils, for example, can have multiple benefits for climate change mitigation and adaptation, food and nutrition security, biodiversity, and water resilience.
However, there are few policies that incentivize farmers to invest in practices to improve soil health and invest in nature based solutions (NbS). This session will build on a set of policy briefs produced in December 2022 from Ethiopia, Kenya, Ghana, Mali, Senegal and Zambia that highlight opportunities for the inclusion of soil health and soil organic carbon (SOC) into the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). To mitigate climate change measures to improve soil health and SOC needs to be integrated in updated NDCs and a better linkage to commitments within the UNCCD Land Degradation Neutrality targets (LDN) is required. The session will present concrete policy measures for soil health in NDCs based on the NDC guidance tool for food systems. This includes a systematic inclusion of NbS across climate, environment, and agricultural strategies and policies.
The session will showcase concrete examples from countries and discuss challenges and opportunities.
Session objectives
Showcase examples of successful implementation of actions for soil health, including nature-based solutions (NbS)
Present opportunities from policy analyses for integrating soil health into NDCs and LDN
Bring together actors from government, research, private sector, and development to scale healthy soil practices and NbS; and
Garner support to implement robust, simple, yet accurate soil health and NbS monitoring.
