News

Soils provide essential ecosystem services such as food production and carbon storage. Although soils are managed and owned locally, their degradation is a key global issue, as their ecosystem services transcend national boundaries. Sustainable soil management thus requires a global approach. Like last year, Berlin was the host city of the Global Soil Week, which was held there for the second consecutive year. This multi-stakeholder event took place in the last week of October and gathered over 450 participants from all over the world.

The Society of Ecological Restoration held its fifth world conference on ecological restoration in Madison, Wisconsin, USA from 6 to 11 October 2013. UNU-LRT was presented at the conference in an oral presentation and in a poster. The UNU-LRT Director, Hafdis Hanna Aegisdottir, gave a talk titled Education for sustainable development with a focus on land restoration - what is its impact? The poster presented, focused on UNU-LRT training and capacity building as an essential part of reaching a sustainable future. One former UNU-LRT fellow from 2011, Ms. Altantsetseg Balt from Mongolia, attended the conference. She works for the Mongolian mining company Oyu Tolgoi LLC in restoring mined land.

On 19 September, ten fellows graduated from the UNU-LRT annual six-month training programme. The graduated fellows are from Ethiopia (1), Ghana (1), Mongolia (1), Namibia (1), Niger (2), Kyrgyzstan (2) and Uganda (2), five women and five men. At the graduation ceremony the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson, addressed the fellows. He emphasized the importance of land restoration and sustainable use of land globally, and acknowledged the important work of UNU-LRT on these pressing issues in developing countries. Moreover, the Minister acknowledged UNU-LRT for its new Gender Equality Policy.

This week the UNU-LRT fellows introduced their final projects at an open seminar at the Keldnaholt Campus of the Agricultural University of Iceland. The projects, as well as the oral presentation, are the final output of each fellow in order to graduate from the UNU-LRT programme. The fellows have worked on their projects for several months and have only few days more before turning them in. After that, graduation day awaits.

Fulfilling her dream, former UNU-LRT fellow Esther Ekua Amoako from Ghana, has organized an environmental education in her community. In a letter to the UNU-LRT programme she writes: "I had this passion to do environmental education but did not know exactly how to go about it. The lectures in environmental literacy, restoration, and linking knowledge and action, visioning and strategic development as well as the photos in Sagnagardur (children involved in restoration), gave me a sense of direction. Environmental literacy clubs in three basic schools have been formed and launched. I see this as launching a dream".

In the first week of July, the UNU-LRT fellows participated in a 4 days field excursion. Moving from Gunnarsholt in the south the fellows went through the highlands in the south-west up to the north-west of Iceland, before heading south again through the Kjölur highland road. This was the first of a total of two field excursions the fellows will experience during their stay in Iceland. The second trip is scheduled in late August. The 2013 UNU-fellows have already been on shorter field trips close to Keldnaholt, the base of the UNU-LRT programme. The aim of these trips is to introduce the fellows to different land use practices in Iceland, land degradation problems and how they have been combated in different areas in Iceland.