Regional Soil Partnerships discussed challenges and opportunities for cooperation. Main challenges included lack of awareness, coordination, and funding. Solutions proposed clarifying roles of national focal points and improving communication between regions. Regions expressed interest in collaborating on soil doctors, salinity, guidelines implementation, centers of excellence, and data sharing. The GSP will facilitate connections and priorities must be set due to workload.

1. Status and Challenges of
Regional Soil Partnerships
Prof. Victor Chude

2. 27 April 2020 | Meeting of the Chairs of the
Regional Soil Partnerships
• Brief each other on regional challenges and updates
• Discuss and propose ways for the GSP to help
• Discuss about inter-regional cooperation opportunities
The Chairs, vice-Chairs or Secretariats of all regions attended

3. Regional specific challenges
Region Main challenges
Africa (AfSP) Need to create awareness on the existence of the GSP and
the AfSP within regional entities like the African Union that
can help mobilizing financial resources and implement
activities
Asia (ASP) There is a lack of communication and coordination within
the region. Individual countries need to talk more with each
other and efforts to co-finance and host regional events
should continue. More countries should step forward on this.
Europe (ESP) There is a need to organize the existing resources effectively
and coordinate activities at the regional level. The regional
implementation plan is too ambitious
Eurasian sub-region
(EASP)
There is a need to coordinate effective communication
between the government and the local communities. Active
experts should be in the condition to interact with the
government, otherwise, it will be difficult to implement and
scale up activities

4. Regional specific challenges
Region Main challenges
Latin America There is the need to approve the new regional
implementation plan and especially the challenge for the
region is to mobilize resources to implement the VGSSM at
the national and regional level.
Near East and
North Africa
There is the need to create awareness on sustainable soil
management and fighting soil degradation in the region.
Armed conflicts and crisis have made it challenging to
implement the regional implementation plan and collect data
on soil, which are still scarse.
North America There is the need for GSP to better coordinate the work in
terms of data sharing and management between countries
and regions. This can be the trigger for activities on research.
Pacific There is the need to elucidate the role of GSP and the PaSP
at the government level. At present, there is a lack of
organization, communication and inactive national focal
points (NFPs) that make rather difficult to implement GSP
activities.

5. Cross cutting challenges |overview and
solutions
1. Lack of support from decision makers and national focal points
The GSP is doing its best to advocate for SSM and help countries become aware of
the importance of soil. We can intensify our efforts but countries have their
individual agenda.
2. Some national focal points are not active or in the position to comply with their
. role
The fact that some NFP works for the government administration while others
work in research institutions or in the academia creates confusion and hiders the
implementation of GSP activities at the country level. The GSP should first of all
clarify the roles and responsibilities of the NFPs; do they have a communication
and coordination role or are they the “official” country representatives?
For some countries, it was decided that when a national focal point (NFP) is not
active, an alternate or acting NFP should have been nominated. For countries in
which experts from the academia are the main implementers of GSP activities, it
was and suggested the GSP to have the NFP from the government and its
alternate from academia.

6. Cross cutting challenges |overview and
solutions
3. Lack of financial resource mobilization
All countries and regions should be active in mobilizing financial resources with
the support of the GSP Secretariat.
The GSP Secretariat would like to implement a method whereby countries can
apply for funds. In this regard, the GSP can become a donor.
4. Lack of communication between and within the RSPs as well as with the GSP
Secretariat
The GSP can organize regular online meetings of the RSPs Chair to share
information and discuss about how to overcome challenges and promote inter-
regional cooperation.

7. Cross cutting challenges |overview and
solutions
5. Awareness on the institutional status of the GSP and its Regional Soil Partnerships
The GSP secretariat will explore the possibility to have the Director General (DG)
of FAO to introduce the GSP and its activities to regional and sub-regional bodies
and to provide details on the role of the NFPs.
When addressing the government, depending on the situation of each case, it can
be decided to work bottom up or top down.

8. Inter-regional cooperation opportunities
Asia Africa Eurasia Europe Latin America NENA North America Pacific
Asia
Africa
Eurasia
Europe
Latin America
NENA
North America
Pacific
• All regions were asked to complete the following matrix in order to report on
the inter-regional cooperation opportunities they foresee
• During the analysis of the matrix, regions expressing similar interests were
identified
• Thematic emails were sent to the regions in order to (1) connect regions with
similar interests and (2) open the discussion on how to turn these proposals
into concrete cooperation

9. Inter-regional cooperation opportunities
Identified areas for cooperation:
• Soil Doctors
• soil salinity
• Implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines for Sustainable Soil Management
and Pillar 1 activities in general
• Establishment of regional centers of excellence in soil research
• Black soils
• Soil data and mapping
• Soil pollution
• Soil laboratories, including spectroscopy
• Inter-regional project formulation

10. Inter-regional cooperation opportunities
All regions interested in the different areas for cooperation
have been put in touch with each other and with the GSP
expert in charge of each topic.
The GSP Secretariat can facilitate the work but each region
should take an active role in bringing forward these proposals
for cooperation.
The GSP is currently working on several topics and activities
that make its workload consistent. Therefore, it might be
appropriate to prioritize opportunities for cooperation. Only
proposal that are strongly supported by the regions should
be brought forward.