OP-ED | The Call to Invest in Soil Health to Combat Desertification and Drought is Stronger than Ever

By Dr Leigh Ann Winowiecki, CA4SH Co-Lead and Soil and Land Health Research Theme Lead for CIFOR-ICRAF

Every year on 17 June, the Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH) joins in with our global partners, allies, and Coalition members in celebrating World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought. CA4SH is firmly rooted in the UN Convention to Combat Desertification and Drought (UNCCD), and we look to this day as a beacon to celebrate our successes and reflect on our way forward as a multistakeholder organisation committed to restoring and protecting land.

Central to our approach is the imperative to scale healthy soil practices globally. Plain and simple.

“[Soil Health is] the ability of the soil to sustain the productivity, diversity, and environmental services of terrestrial ecosystems.”

— Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils (2020)

Soil is the skin of the Earth, and healthy soil is the foundation of our food systems. It underpins healthy ecosystems, supports the most biodiversity of any habitat, and without it, we can not combat desertification and drought. Healthy soil stores water, providing a buffer for plants, animals and humans when rainfall is scarce, and it protects the land from degradation, such as erosion, leading to desertification.

Healthy soil is our first line of defence against the forces leading to desertification and drought, and scaling healthy soil must be central to our approach to restoring land. There is a glaring need for real, concerted action for healthy soil to combat desertification and drought across terrestrial ecosystems. So, how do we do it?

Looking to global rangelands as a case study, we can see that they cover more than 50% of Earth’s surface, and more than 50% of them are severely degraded. More than ⅓ of the Earth’s surface is degraded, so rangelands experience more degradation than the global average.

At the beginning of June, I attended the 2025 International Rangelands Congress in Adelaide, Australia, to exchange knowledge and build momentum for restoring and protecting rangelands, and two key entry points were clear: 1) Multi-stakeholder action and 2) Land and soil health monitoring.

Soil health monitoring is essential for a number of reasons, including:

Understanding the impacts of land management practices on ecosystem services
Bringing evidence to bear to prioritise interventions and investments
Adapting interventions to maximise synergies and minimise tradeoffs
Adapted from CA4SH Monitoring, Research & Implementation Working Group (2024)

Download the AUDA-NEPAD Policy Brief

Gathering, assessing, and leveraging data on soil health is crucial for guiding policy and practice. For example, AUDA-NEPAD, NORAD, AICCRA, CA4SH and CIFOR-ICRAF produced a guidance note, policy brief and insights brief on the imperative for strengthening soil information systems to inform continental-level strategies and processes and bring evidence to bear on the Nairobi and Kampala Declarations, and the Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Action Plan.

To do this, a robust sampling design that accurately and cost-effectively assesses multiple indicators of soil and land, at scales relevant to farmers, pastoralists, land managers, governments and international communities, is needed. It starts in the field, with a systematic stratified sampling design to capture variability across the landscape. Using a standard plot size of 1000 m2 we ensure that field-based measurements are spatially explicit. In this plot, composite soil samples are collected, water infiltration is measured, soil erosion is classified, and vegetation is assessed and identified. If we are in the rangelands, the rangeland manual is employed where grasses, forbs and woody vegetation are assessed across a transect.

The Land Degradation Surveillance Framework (LDSF) was developed in 2005, marking a 20 year anniversary, to fill these key data gaps and answer key questions about the state of our soil and land health. It has been implemented in over 45 countries across the tropics and is now the largest geo-referenced dataset of soil health, land degradation, and vegetation diversity.

These data can be used to establish a biophysical baseline, track changes over time, and provide opportunities for capacity development and stakeholder engagement. Implementing soil health monitoring is a group effort. We need multistakeholder action to collect, assess, interpret and action data through multi-level decision-making processes including the UNCCD COP, the Africa Food Systems Forum, UNFCCC Declarations, Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), Ecosystem Restoration Targets (UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, AFR100, Bonn Challenge), and more. In 2024, we celebrated the recognition of rangelands and pastoralists at the UNCCD COP16, which was driven by stories from people living and working on the ground in rangelands.

Read the LDSF Brief

Visit the LDSF dashboard to learn more

At the 2025 IRC, we saw even more concerted effort in action through the new Rangelands Stewardship Council, Global Rangelands Standard, and accompanying rangelands monitoring framework, in development. This is not a standalone initiative implemented by a singular organisation; it is a consortium of dedicated stakeholders who all bring something to the table. CIFOR-ICRAF, for example, is leading the development of the monitoring framework. During the pre-congress workshop, the GEF-funded and IUCN, ILRI-led project Sustainable Investments for Large-Scale Rangeland Restoration (STELARR) engaged participants to contribute to the Standard and the Monitoring Framework. Learn more about the framework in this new brief!

Multi-stakeholder organisations such as CA4SH play a key role in driving action by providing a dedicated space for multi-stakeholders to convene, collaborate and combine forces to make change happen from the ground up.

Business as usual is no longer an option. To bend the curve on land degradation, we must come together, collectively, to develop evidence-based solutions to scale soil and ecosystem restoration solutions.

Join CA4SH today!