Life on Earth depends on healthy soils. The soil under our feet is a living system – home to many fascinating plants and animals, whose invisible interactions ensure our well-being and that of the planet. Soils provide us with nutritious food and other products as well as with clean water and flourishing habitats for biodiversity. At the same time, soils can help slow the onset of climate change and make us more resilient to extreme climate events such as droughts and floods. Soils preserve our cultural heritage and are a key part of the landscapes that we all cherish.

The United Nations General Assembly declared 2021 to 2030 as the decade of ‘ecosystem restoration’, signalling a global consensus on the urgency to restore degraded lands. Restoring degraded lands is critical to regain lost ecological functionality that underpins life-sustaining ecosystem services, such as the provision of food, fresh water, and fibre, and the regulation of climate, natural disasters, and pests. Indeed, restoration is fundamental for meeting the triple goals of tackling the climate crisis, reversing biodiversity loss, and improving human wellbeing.

The food system challenges require simultaneous action across different sectors and concerted efforts of diverse players in food systems. While past efforts inclined towards boosting gricultural production, today’s focus has shifted to influencing transformative changes to the entire food systems continuum, from production and processing to marketing and distribution, using innovative solutions. Sub-Saharan Africa has been facing unprecedented challenges that affect the sustainability of food and agriculture systems, putting food and nutrition security at significant risk.

A key purpose of this publication is to provide an account of SGP’s experience working with Indigenous Peoples over the last twenty-five years. The publication celebrates past achievements and advances critical lessons that can be used in forging new partnerships with Indigenous Peoples in future programming cycles, including opportunities to employ blended finance solutions.

Drylands occupy more than 40% of the world’s land area and are home to some two billion people. This includes a disproportionate number of the world’s poorest people, who live in degraded and severely degraded landscapes. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification states on its website that 12 million hectares are lost annually to desertification and drought, and that more than 1.5 billion people are directly dependent on land that is being degraded, leading to US$42 billion in lost earnings each year.

This study develops options for the German government to improve international soil governance in the short, medium and long term. The study first takes stock of existing international instruments and institutions that are relevant for soil protection and its governance at the international level. It as-sesses the actual and potential steering effect of, inter alia, the Desertification Convention, the Biodiversity Convention, the Paris Agreement and climate regime, regional treaties, FAO, UNEP, IPBES and IPCC.

It is estimated that 20% of global land is either degraded or undergoing degradation, leading to an annual loss of 12 million hectares of productive land (UNCCD 2017). In Africa, some 715 million ha are degraded, including 65% of all arable land, 30% of all grazing land and 20% of all forests. This is due to increasing populations, poor land management, institutional challenges and climate change (Gnacadja and Wiese 2016).

Forests managed by Indigenous and other local communities generate important benefits for livelihood, and contribute to regional and global biodiversity and carbon sequestration goals. Yet, challenges to community forestry remain. Rural out-migration, for one, can make it hard for communities to maintain broad and diverse memberships invested in local forest commons. This includes young people, who can contribute critical energy, ideas, and skills and are well positioned to take up community forest governance and work, but often aspire to alternative livelihoods and lifestyles.

Rapid expansion of unsustainable farming practices in upland areas of Southeast Asia threatens food security and the environment. This study assessed alternative agroforestry systems for sustainable land management and livelihood improvement in northwest Vietnam. The performance of fruit tree-based agroforestry was compared with that of sole cropping, and farmers’ perspectives on agroforestry were documented.

Non-indigenous conifers are considered invasive to the coastal dune heathland in Denmark, and massive clearing is carried out in an attempt to recreate and keep the original heathland. Burning is a common method for managing, but its feasibility to control the seed bank of conifers has not been investigated. This project shows that the burning of logged conifer trees will often eliminate seeds of lodgepole pine, mugo pine and Sitka spruce, even when the seeds were placed into a depth of five centimeters in the soil.

As with the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), Argentina has experienced an intense process of deforestation and loss of natural vegetation in the last few decades. As the eighth-largest country in the world, with a total mainland area of more than 2.7 million km2 , this not only has significant implications for the region, but globally too. Native forests, such as those in the “Chaco” region in the north of the country, have been particularly affected by this process.

Common approaches to reverse the trend of tropical deforestation and loss of wildlife include systems of protected areas (PAs) such as national parks, payments for ecosystem services programs (PES) that provide financial reward to landowners protecting their forests, and ecotourism that attempts to increase local economic gains and protect biodiversity while minimizing detrimental ecological effects from tourists.