This sub-theme will deliberate on the importance of developing and implementing National Water Scarcity Action Plans and Water Accounting Roadmaps in addressing water scarcity. It aims to provide a comprehensive overview of how policy and governance can play a pivotal role in promoting sustainable water use and management. Participants will share innovative strategies and frameworks designed to measure, monitor, and manage water resources more effectively, ensuring that water scarcity challenges are met with informed and actionable responses. The discussions will highlight the importance of integrating water accounting practices into national policies and governance structures to create resilient water management systems capable of supporting equitable access and sustainable economic growth. Through expert-led presentations, case study analyses, and interactive discussions, participants will gain valuable insights into the best practices and lessons learned from around the world.

Equitable distribution and management of water resources remain a complex challenge due to varying water tenure arrangements across different regions. These arrangements, which define who can use what water, when, and how, often lead to conflicts and inequities, especially in the face of increasing demand and climate change impacts. By engaging in focused technical dialogues, stakeholders can collaboratively explore solutions, share knowledge, and develop policies that ensure water security and fairness. Such discussions are crucial for harmonizing interests, recognizing rights, and facilitating sustainable water management practices that benefit all sectors of society.  The discussions will focus on identifying the national and regional dominant conflicts and inequities on water tenure, collaborative technical solutions and understanding the current level of knowledge of different stakeholders groups on water tenure and its sustainable management and the policies to be developed to ensure water security and fairness.

The session is dedicated to valuing water from social, economic, and environmental perspectives and raising the awareness of water’s role in achieving all the SDGs, facilitating cross-sectoral dialogue and collaboration on water, setting principles and guidance on water resource governance and management, ensuring sustainable water allocation to agricultural sector, and establishing an overarching, anticipatory framework that aligns national objectives with global commitments. Participants will engage in a collaborative exploration of the NWR's multi-level approach, from global advisory to regional workshops, down to national dialogue and action plans. This session is an opportunity for water professionals, policymakers, and stakeholders to gain insights into the NWR's methodology, engage in knowledge exchange, and contribute to shaping the strategic direction of water governance and management for Sustainable Development Goals.

Water management plays a crucial role in maintaining soil health. Water scarcity, improper irrigation practices, insufficient drainage systems, and excessive water uptake can contribute to the buildup of salts in the soil, leading to soil salinity. This risk is particularly pronounced in arid and semi-arid regions where evaporation rates surpass precipitation levels and along coastlines and river deltas due to seawater intrusion and the transport of saline groundwater to the soil surface. The situation is further exacerbated by unsustainable land use and soil management practices, including excessive fertilizer use. Addressing these issues requires a holistic approach, with coherent policies, innovative technologies and uptake of proven practices to preserve and enhance soil health, as well as to restore degraded soils. This sub-theme will discuss efficient and cost-effective approaches and technologies for the management of salt-affected soils. It will discuss their implementation potentials and identify knowledge and technology gaps as well as socio-economic and political obstacles that need to be addressed to support effective implementation at scale.

Integrated Land Use Planning (ILUP) is needed at different levels of decision-making to promote sustainable and efficient use of resources and to cope with current and future challenges of population growth and increasing demands. In this context, FAO has been working on the new version of 'Guidelines for Integrated Land Use Planning - an update' in collaboration with key partner institutions. This session will provide an opportunity to raise awareness of Integrated Land Use Planning, invite stakeholders who are in charge of ILUP from various related disciplines and sectors to share their experiences, good practices and present case studies that demonstrate specific challenges faced in the country as well as potential synergies that can be harnessed to implement integrated land use planning at national and local scales. Discussions will focus on specific challenges countries are facing in implementing integrated land use planning at national and local scales and the potential synergies that can be harnessed to effectively implement ILUP and use that in decision making.

Land degradation neutrality (LDN) is a target under SDG 15 with the aim to achieve a balance between land degradation and land restoration, ensuring that the amount and quality of land resources remain stable or improve over time. This involves implementing measures to sustainably manage land resources, restore degraded areas, and promote sustainable land use practices. This sub-theme will look into the dominant needs/gaps to achieve LDN in countries/regions and potential international cooperation actions to support countries in achieving LDN targets.

The Global Land Outlook 2 calls for putting people forefront and centre in land and natural resource restoration, emphasizing the goal of land restoration is to create sustainable livelihood opportunities for people especially small-scale farmers, indigenous peoples, women and youth to boost incomes, secure food and water supplies, and make them less vulnerable. The report highlights the critical importance of bottom-up stakeholder engagement and the security of land tenure and resource rights. This sub-theme will discuss how more inclusive and responsible governance can facilitate the shift to sustainable land use and management practices.  It will facilitate the sharing of perspectives of women, youth and indigenous peoples and local communities and good practices in engaging them in sustainable land, soil and water management.

Land and soil decarbonization refers to the process of reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from land and soil, as well as enhancing the capacity of land and soil to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. This is essential for mitigating climate change and achieving carbon neutrality. In 2017, the Global Soil Partnership, FAO estimated that global soils contain 694 petagrams of carbon (PgC) in the top 30 centimeters of soil. With the release of the global soil sequestration potential map in 2022, the yearly mitigation potential of sustainable soil management was assessed to correspond to 8.6 – 33.8 percent of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. This sub-theme will explore and discuss innovative strategies and technologies for achieving land and soil decarbonization, including agroforestry, afforestation, biochar application, restoration of peatlands and degraded lands, as well as carbon markets and payments for ecosystem services as sustainable financing for land and soil management.

Soil erosion affects soil quality by removing the highly fertile topsoil and exposing the subsurface horizon that has low organic matter content. In areas of moderate to severe soil losses, it is common to experience a 30 to 50 percent loss in crop yields, which translates into 5 to 10 percent of crop production at the field scale in many regions. In recent decades, many studies have been carried out to better understand the mechanisms and spatial distribution of soil erosion caused by water erosion and, to some extent, wind erosion and tillage. However, the lack of harmonized information on global soil erosion dynamics remains to be addressed. This sub-theme will provide scientific evidence, supported by concrete and quantifiable methodology, for the development of soil erosion map and data harmonization to assess and evaluate the soil erosion ratio at national and global level. Discussions will focus on internationally accepted methodologies and indicators for the characterization and monitoring of soil erosion and showcasing cutting-edge advancements such as innovative survey, description and sampling, monitoring and analytical methods, remote sensing technologies, digital soil mapping, application of artificial intelligence and machine learning in soil analysis and erosion mapping as well as successes in establishing soil erosion information systems. They will also identify remaining challenges and knowledge and technology gaps in developing national soil erosion monitoring systems and promote strategies to unlock the potential of quality soil data in informing policy decisions and management practices at all levels, in driving strategic global initiatives and in advancing international goals, for food security, sustainable resource management and resilience. The sub-theme will provide guidance to countries in mapping soil erosion and initiate actions to map soil erosion at the national and global levels.

Soil erosion is a natural process, but it can be significantly worsened by improper agricultural practices like intensive tillage, monoculture cropping, overgrazing, and insufficient soil conservation measures. Additionally, improper water management practices and the effects of climate change can exacerbate soil erosion rates. This sub-theme will share and deliberate, with scientific evidence including quantifiable economic impacts, on policies and concrete actions (practices and technologies) to minimize soil erosion and restore the eroded sites for sustainable soil conservation, enhanced ecosystem services, and improved food security.  Specifically, the sub-theme will revisit the recommendations from FAO’s Global Symposium on Soil Erosion (GSER19) and promote successful management practices and techniques for improvement, optimization and upscaling. This includes discussions on the role of nature-based solutions and actions required to improve national and international policies and frameworks to support investments and actions at scale to prevent and mitigate soil erosion. The sub-theme is intended to provide comprehensive technical and political recommendations for countries and partners to address erosion issues.

Crop residues burning is a broadly applied method to remove excessive residues, facilitate the timely planting of crops and control pests and weeds. However, it can have detrimental effects on soil fertility, biodiversity, and environmental and human health. By reducing the soil organic matter content, the practice also exposes soil to erosion by wind and water and hampers its ability to sequester carbon with impacts extending to climate regulation. The combustion generates harmful volatile compounds and gases that can deposit in water bodies and travel across borders contributing to respiratory problems. This sub-theme aims to examine countries’ actions on the sustainable management of crop residues, reducing their burning. The discussion extends to monitoring farmers activities, promoting technologies and partnership for the collection and transformation of crop residues into value products as well as the creation of carbon markets for smallholder farmers. Raising awareness, setting up policies and incentives, boosting public-private partnerships to deliver affordable and user-friendly technologies and tools for farmers, and the eventual payment of ecosystem services will be discussed.

Integrated management of land and soil degradation in a transboundary context involves coordinated efforts among neighboring countries to address shared challenges related to land and soil degradation. This approach recognizes that land and soil degradation often transcend national boundaries and require collaborative solutions to effectively manage and mitigate their impacts. Collaborative governance, information sharing, joint planning and management, and the establishment of monitoring and evaluation mechanisms are some key aspects to address to prevent and mitigate the occurrence of transboundary issues related to land and soil degradation. This session aims to discuss countries' strengths and weaknesses in policy, information and decision-making support systems, technology, and technical skills on land, soil and water management that can have international impacts. Thus, it aims to brainstorm on strategies for increasing cooperation and coordination among neighboring countries to tackle shared land and soil degradation challenges effectively. The goal is to prevent the adverse effects of unsustainable soil management practices from crossing national borders.

This sub-theme will discuss challenges and solutions to ensure coherent policies and their translation into integrated, sustainable land, soil and water resource management practices on the ground, demonstrating, amongst others, the climate benefits. Examples of success will be shared, including community-based approaches and private sector’s engagement in developing technologies and innovations to enhance soil health, water efficiency, and land productivity for food production while preserving natural resources.  Policymakers, practitioners and stakeholders will discuss how to boost collaboration to promote integrated, sustainable land, soil and water management practices for food security and resilience.

This sub-theme will share advancements in developing tools and innovative approaches to support integrated land, soil and water management practices and measure their contributions to enhanced climate resilience and reducing GHG emission from the agrifood systems, thus making the case for leveraging climate finance to invest in these practices. Participants will discuss the needs for a wide application of the proven tools and approaches and how regional and global collaboration will play a role to ensure that most vulnerable smallholders will have access to and be able to use the tools.

The bioeconomy utilizes renewable biological resources from both land and sea to produce food, materials, and energy, offering solutions to sustainable development challenges. Sustainable management of land, soil and water resources is crucial for the bioeconomy's success, supporting bio-based industries while mitigating environmental impacts. Integrated approaches to land, soil and water management optimize resource use, enhance soil health, and promote sustainable agriculture. This session explores how bioeconomy principles can be effectively integrated into these management practices to maximize resource efficiency, minimize waste, and foster innovation for sustainable agricultural systems.

This sub-theme will discuss the financial landscape for sustainable land, soil and water management in the challenging context of increasing demand for food production and multiple crises. This includes sharing innovative financing mechanisms, that blend public and private investments and leverage global environmental and climate finance. A special focus will be on financing smallholders and communities for sustained actions at scale, addressing persistent challenges such as their lack of access to land and water.