Presenting the 2024 Annual Report of the Center for Rural Empowerment and Agricultural Transformation for Sustainability (Creats International). Through your generous donations, strong partnerships, and unwavering support, we achieved remarkable milestones captured in this report.

As we celebrate ten years since our founding, we extend our heartfelt gratitude for walking with us on this transformative journey. Together, we look forward to deepening our impact and continuing to empower communities to move from merely surviving to truly thriving.

This Policy Brief derives from the “Partners for Change – SOILutions for a Food Secure, Resilient, and Sustainable Future” (short SOILutions) conference in May 2025. The Partners for Change (P4C) Network brings together around 250 key stakeholders from government, civil society, and the private sector from over 30 countries. To advance the transformation of agricultural and food systems, the P4C Network provides an inclusive dialogue platform that fosters the c ocreation of sustainable transformation pathways across the three stakeholder groups.

This new paper from IFDC outlines the role of soil in mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change while also being influenced by these changes – a complex two-way relationship.

The authors first provide an understanding of this relationship before discussing the direct and indirect pathways through which soil health impacts carbon sequestration. Next, they highlight global evidence on soil health’s role in ecosystem services, including its ability to promote resilient, climate-adaptable systems.

Then, they discuss how these beneficial effects are under threat, as the increase in climate change-induced events limits the ability of soil to mitigate and manage climate change. Finally, they conclude by identifying areas where further action and research are needed. 

A new paper from IFDC seeks to elaborate on this theory of change and build the case for improving soil health as a pathway to food security.

The paper begins with an overview of how soil health is critical to multiple SDGs, including SDG 2: Zero Hunger. It then discusses the challenge of global hunger; including its persistence and rising trend in recent years.

Next, the authors delve into approaches that are critical to improving soil health so that crop systems can thrive. Next, is a look at not just overall food availability but the challenge of hidden hunger which is closely linked to levels of plant nutrition and healthy soils, before concluding with the caveats of the assessment.

This presentation is for use by CA4SH members and stakeholders to introduce CA4SH, our ongoing activities, and key achievements.

The Land Degradation Surveillance Framework (LDSF), a comprehensive method developed by World Agroforestry (ICRAF) scientists, provides a science-based field protocol for quantifying land and soil characteristics, vegetation composition and land degradation status over time. LDSF was developed as a response to a lack of methods for systematic landscape-level assessment of soil and ecosystem health, using a robust and consistent indicator framework.

Learn more from the University of British Columbia Virtual Soil Science Learning Resources Library

The Soil Health Resolution is a set of commitments to enable and scale healthy soil practices to mitigate and adapt to climate change, restore biodiversity, improve water resilience, enhance food and nutrition security, and protect natural and cultural heritage.

In his Nobel Prize acceptance lecture, economist Theodore Schultz (1979) remarked, “Most of the world’s poor people earn their living from agriculture, so if we knew the economics of agriculture, we would know much of the economics of being poor”. If agriculture, then, largely determines the fate of the world’s poor, soil health has a fundamental role to play, given its impact on agriculture. In this paper, we lay out the deep relationships between soil health, agriculture, and poverty, and their implications for policy making. We focus on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 1 (SDG 1): No Poverty (United Nations, n.d.- a), which seeks to end poverty in all its forms everywhere. Extreme poverty is defined as surviving on less than $2.15 per person per day, at 2017 prices. We use the Intergovernmental Technical Panel’s definition of soil health: “. . . the ability of the soil to sustain the productivity, diversity, and environmental services of terrestrial ecosystem” (FAO, 2020).

Despite its importance, many national restoration monitoring frameworks still lack robust systems for tracking management practices at finer scales. Most reporting focuses on broad targets such as tree cover increase or total hectares restored—yet these figures alone don’t tell us whether restoration efforts are truly improving ecosystem function. Without clear data on soil health, vegetation recovery, erosion reduction, or water availability, restoration risks being implemented without understanding its actual effectiveness on the ground.

This Restoration Monitoring Guide addresses that gap. It provides a hands-on, field-ready approach for monitoring restoration outcomes at both plot and watershed levels. Developed for district-level field agents, extension staff, and natural resource management officers, the guide supports locally grounded, scientifically robust monitoring that enhances decision-making, accountability, and adaptive management.

Healthy soil is the foundation of resilient landscapes, sustainable food systems, and climate adaptation in Africa’s drylands. As a unifying element across climate, nutrition, biodiversity, and restoration agendas, soil health plays a critical role in realising the ambitions of the African Union’s Great Green Wall Initiative (GGWI). With over 65% of productive land degraded and soil erosion undermining agricultural productivity, smallholder farmers across the continent face compounding vulnerabilities. The GGWI Strategy (2024–2034) recognises soil health as central to reversing land degradation and building long-term resilience, aligning closely with the Africa Fertiliser and Soil Health Action Plan (AFSH-AP) (2023 – 2033) and broader goals outlined in the Ten-Year Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) Strategy and Action Plan (2026-2035).

Under the UK PACT funded project ‘Promoting nature-based solutions for land restoration while strengthening the national monitoring technical working group in Kenya’, CIFOR-ICRAF have undertaken practical training sessions with various stakeholders on using the Regreening App, a citizen science data collection initiative that enables farmers, government agents, project officers and implementors to track and provide evidence of restoration practices on the ground by reporting data on key indicators of land restoration.

This knowledge brief seeks to outline uptake of the Regreening Mobile App following two three-day practical workshops attended by a range of multi-disciplinary participants.

Healthy soil is critical for ecosystem restoration, climate change mitigation and adaptation, biodiversity conservation, water cycling, farmer livelihoods, and food and nutrition security. Despite its importance, soil health has often been overlooked, but momentum is growing as evidenced by recent high-level initiatives such as the Nairobi Declaration as part of the Africa Fertiliser and Soil Health Action Plan and the European Union Soil Mission: A Soil Deal for Europe. The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration was launched on 5 June 2021 to galvanise local, national and global action to restore degraded ecosystems. In the same year, the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) initiated a call for coalitions of action to champion integrated, systemic approaches to transform food systems. The Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH) was launched to bring soil health into focus with participation across sectors and scales to ultimately raise awareness about this critical ecosystem that we depend on, but which is being degraded at unprecedented rates. Since 2021, CA4SH has grown to include nearly 200 members (as of January 2025) representing the public and private sectors, research institutions, non-governmental organisations, farmer organisations and cooperatives, individuals, youth-led organisations, and indigenous organisations to mention some. The initiative has also had a strong focus on gender equity and social inclusion (GESI) in soil and landscape restoration. The Coalition promotes soil as a unifier across a diverse set of stakeholders, building partnerships to overcome critical economic, technical and institutional barriers to the adoption and scaling of healthy soil practices. Furthermore, CA4SH facilitates evidence-based policy and practice action for the scaling of restoration practices that improve soil health. The Private Sector Guiding Group, launched as part of the UNFSS, developed a call to action to support increased investments in healthy soil, and continues to support the actions of the Coalition. Its four working groups focus on communication, soil health monitoring and implementation, policy, and financial investment. In the first three years since its launch, the Coalition has engaged in multinational dialogues and contributed to the adoption of soil health in the outcomes from the UN Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) through the Koronivia joint work on agriculture (now the Sharm El-Sheikh Declaration), the UNFCCC COP28 UAE Declaration on Food Systems and Agriculture, the UNCCD COP16 Riyadh Action Agenda and also launched the Soil Health Resolution. Leveraging on the enabling policy environment, the Coalition catalyses public and private sector action with outcomes for economic returns and growth, productivity and rural livelihoods, climate and nature. The positioning of the Coalition in the current global environmental transition is pivotal to drive the multifaceted benefits that soil health improvement offers to food systems transformation and global adaptation to and mitigation of climate change.

This Brief focuses on soil health on the African Continent, drawing on discussions with senior government officials from Ministries of Agriculture across Africa, who convened in Kigali as part of the Policy Dialogue series in September 2024 to discuss issues related to the implementation of the Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Action Plan. This Policy Dialogue aimed to: identify policy action to incentivize and support the improvement of soil health and environmentally sustainable fertilizer use, including fertilizer subsidy reform programs; and share lessons learned, challenges and opportunities for policy reform to enhance effectiveness of fertilizer support and other public programs on soil health and sustainability

In light of the increased political support, international attention, and financial investment in restoration, the question this ‘Insight Brief’ aims to address is: How is evidence being used and integrated into (ecosystem) restoration processes and how can it be better utilised to inform and improve restoration action at scale? This brief seeks to highlight current issues around evidence in restoration with a view to providing input for future restoration projects and programmes under the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, but also the diverse plans identified above.

On 27 May 2025, the Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils (VACS) and CA4SH co-hosted a webinar exploring the role of multi-stakeholder action in addressing financing, implementation, and knowledge barriers to scaling soil health solutions.

Healthy soil is the very foundation of our food systems and provides several vital ecosystem services, from carbon sequestration to improving food and nutrition security, to regulating the water cycle to hosting biodiversity. However, land degradation negatively impacts over 3.2 billion people globally. This webinar highlighted the critical role of healthy soil for ecosystem restoration, climate adaptation and mitigation, biodiversity, and food and nutrition security, as well as advancements in monitoring soil health using field assessments, data analytics, Earth Observation, and citizen science.

The project STELARR (Sustainable Investments in Large-Scale Rangeland Restoration) is supporting the development of a global rangelands monitoring framework as a component of a global rangelands standard that will be awarded to rangelands products produced sustainably and according to a set of ecological, environmental, social and animal welfare standards. This global rangelands standard development is being led by the Sustainable Fibre Alliance, and in future will be applied and overseen by a Rangelands Stewardship Council in establishment. The standard will incentivize good land management and investments (including private sector investments) in this. ICRAF is leading the development of the global rangelands monitoring framework working with the Sustainable Fibre Alliance and other partners.

Key messages

• There is urgency to invest in landscape restoration and soil health.

• A continental, systematic monitoring framework can fill knowledge gaps on the impacts of the interventions including the link between management, productivity, diversity and soil health.

• We have the tools to monitor landscape health, combining systematic data collection, citizen science and remote sensing.

• Opportunities to collaborate across donors, projects, initiatives to scale investments and create robust, long-term datasets across diverse sites.

This Brief focuses on the interactions between water security, resilient freshwater systems and agricultural practices and land use. It identifies policy instruments and actions for governments to provide incentives and support to water users in agriculture to manage the quantity and quality of water sourced, used and discharged in a more sustainable way. This can boost water security and resilience of freshwater systems more broadly while strengthening the resilience of agricultural production and food security.

2024 was a big year for soil health and for the Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH). We engaged global stakeholders in united advocacy to scale soil health through our priority areas of action, including science, policy, finance, youth engagement, and implementation on the ground. Scaling soil health can not happen in a vacuum; it requires the diverse perspectives, expertise, experience, and networks of the global community to come together. CA4SH is uniquely positioned to bring these voices together, offering a community and a meeting place for these partnerships to grow and bloom, and in 2024, we did just that in the name of healthy soil.

The Lal Carbon Center is pleased to present a draft of its newest publication The ABCs of Soil by Rattan Lal and Maggie Willis, illustrated by Maggie Willis. The book, intended for upper elementary students and anyone age 10 - 99, introduces young scientists to some concepts fundamental to understanding soil, alongside more advanced vocabulary so that the terms feel familiar as the children explore further.