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.

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.