27 August 2026, Ulaanbaatar | At UNCCD COP17 Mongolia, soil health was at the center of the agenda. It was present across negotiations, ministerial dialogues, side events, and the Action Agenda. The numbers give a sense of its scale: the Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH) network held 72 events alongside 90+ partners across the two weeks. 

The Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH), Landscape Alliance (CIFOR-ICRAF), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), CGIAR Multifunctional Landscapes Science Program, WWF, and partners, convened senior leaders and partners at UNCCD COP17 Mongolia for a high-level dinner focused on a simple but critical message: healthy soils are fundamental to resilient food systems, healthy ecosystems and a more climate-resilient future.

The session, “Advancing Soil Data and Evidence for Rangeland Restoration, LDN Reporting and Decision Making,” brought together perspectives on how soil information systems, harmonised monitoring approaches, open-data platforms and community-led monitoring can strengthen LDN reporting while making evidence more useful to practitioners, policymakers and investors.

Rangelands cover around 80% of Kenya's landmass, yet they are too often viewed through the lens of scarcity rather than the abundance of knowledge, resilience, and opportunity they hold.

Attending the National Conference on Rangelands and Pastoralism, held as part of the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP 2026), was a timely reminder that these landscapes are not only central to Kenya's future, but also to global conversations on climate resilience, biodiversity, food security, and sustainable livelihoods.

For generations, the Basotho people have lived in partnership with their horses, navigating terrain too steep for roads and too wild for machines. Here, where the mountains determine the pace of life, horse and rider move as one carrying food, people, stories, and traditions between remote communities.

It is a relationship built on trust, not ownership.

Ba Jara Thaba—"They Carry the Mountain"—captures this enduring bond through the eyes of filmmaker Ramon Mellett, whose two-year journey into the heart of Semongkong reveals a world that remains remarkably untouched by modernity. Rather than documenting a sporting spectacle, the film lingers in the quieter moments: the stillness before the race, the soft exchange between rider and horse, the silence that follows the thunder of hooves across the highlands.

At GLF Africa 2026 in Nairobi, conversations around restoration repeatedly returned to one central idea: healthy rangelands cannot exist without the people who know, manage, and live within them.

Held at the CIFOR-ICRAF campus during the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP 2026), the conference brought together researchers, pastoralist leaders, restoration practitioners, policymakers, and youth advocates to explore the future of Africa’s landscapes in the face of climate uncertainty, biodiversity loss, and land degradation.

Across global rangelands, livestock move slowly through open landscapes, following rainfall patterns that have shaped ecosystems for generations. To some, these lands appear empty or degraded. But at last week’s GLF Africa 2026 conference in Nairobi, hosted at CIFOR-ICRAF, one message rang clear: rangelands are living systems essential to the future of climate resilience, biodiversity, food security, and soil health.

Held during the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP 2026), the conference brought together pastoralist leaders, scientists, policymakers, youth advocates, investors, and restoration practitioners from around the world to rethink how rangelands are valued - and who is included in shaping their future.

For young people, the message was impossible to ignore: this conversation belongs to you too.

Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH) #Youth4Soil member Lordesturs Gordon attended the conference on behalf of the Coalition, documenting the discussions, experiences, and key themes emerging from the conference through a youth perspective.

The recent “Hooves of Hope!” webinar marked more than an Earth Day celebration - it became a powerful global conversation about the future of pastoralism, rangelands, and soil health in a rapidly changing climate.

Bringing together distinguished speakers from science, policy, pastoralist communities, and regenerative agriculture, the event was hosted by Soil4Climate in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, the Coalition of Action for Soil Health (CA4SH), and collaborators from around the world. Timed alongside Earth Day and within the context of the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, the webinar the webinar drew strong global engagement, with over 100 viewers. Together, participants explored an urgent question: how do we better recognise the communities and ecosystems already demonstrating resilience in the face of climate uncertainty?

This past January marked ten years since Soil4Climate was officially incorporated in the United States — the beginning of our journey to champion soil restoration as a powerful climate solution.