Plenary Meeting of the Eurasian Soil Partnership (EASP). Workshop Report

The Global Soil Partnership (GSP) is a major international initiative with a vision ‘to improve global governance of the limited soil resources of the planet in order to guarantee healthy and productive soils for a food secure world, as well as sustain other essential ecosystem services’. The Regional Soil Partnerships are to assist the GSP to move into concrete field action at regional, national and local levels through ‘Implementation Plans’. The Eurasian chapter of the Global Soil Partnership was successfully launched on November 20 2013 in Moscow, Russia with a final ‘communiqué’ appointing the Eurasian Center for Food Security (ECFS) as the Secretariat. The launch workshop was a first step to support the development of a dynamic community of practice of soil specialists and practitioners and paved the way towards an implementation plan for sustainable soil management and the reversal of alarming soil degradation trends in Eurasia with a preliminary identification of key soil issues.