Síðast uppfært: Fimmtudagur, 27. nóvember 2008 11:37 Þriðjudagur, 25. nóvember 2008 11:49

Sessions

The Forum has four plenary sessions with presentations, in addition to the opening and closing sessions (celebratory event). Abstracts of the presentations can be found in the Forum Book of Abstracts. Full papers of presentations will be published in a Forum Proceedings Book in due time. The presentations can be found under the Programme Section.

Session 1
Setting the Stage: Soils, Society and Global Change
The aim of this session is to set the stage for the Forum and explain the vital importance of soils to society and how global change processes affect the health of the soil. This session will cover the current states of soils, trends and future projections and their social and global context. It will examine the theme from the soil science, societal, policy and synergistic angles at the global level, and then explore regional and local perspectives on the matter, providing examples of current and future strategies, action plans and projects. 

Session 2
Healthy Soils – Supporting Food Security, Water Provision, Poverty Reduction and Biodiversity
This session will highlight the importance of healthy soils for ecosystem integrity, including ecosystem services to human well-being. It will highlight the essential role of soils and land condition issues in food and fiber production, food security, water storage and management, conservation of biological diversity, ensuring ecosystem function and ecosystem services, and ultimately, maintaining stable societies. It will also bring attention to the opportunity to consider soil management as a starting point from which to ground approaches to these global issues in a more holistic and sustainable manner - ‘from the soil-up’. This session will also discuss capacity building for developing national legal policy and institutional frameworks for soil protection.

Session 3
Mitigating Climate Change through Restoration of Degraded Land
The restoration of degraded land and prevention of land degradation provides multiple co-benefits in addition to the obvious. For example, land restoration and the prevention of land degradation have an important role in carbon sequestration and thus may be an important instrument in mitigating climate change. However, when using land restoration as means to sequester carbon, close attention must be given to how project objectives and outcomes align with MDGs, the impact on biological diversity and the cost and complexity of monitoring carbon sequestration. In addition, to inspire the business community, it is fundamentally important that the business case for land restoration as a tool to mitigate climate change is explained. Session 3 addresses those topics through five separate but interrelated presentations, and in addition attempts to answer the question if Iceland can indeed become the first carbon neutral country in the world, through the means of land restoration, forestry and an expansion in the use of renewable fuels.

Session 4
Creating and Enabling Environment
The main theme of this session is how to create an enabling environment to achieve sustainable land management through the use of a variety of experiences in integrated approaches. The session will consider the types of knowledge and information sources available for sustainable soil management, including the development of an ethic for soil and gender-related roles in achieving sustainable land management. It will further canvass the mechanisms to engage stakeholders in pursuing good land management and the various incentives and disincentives to encourage sustainable soil management.