Plenary: Towards an integrated perspective on the Post-2015 Development Agenda

Plenary Description

Having emphasized the role of sustainable soil management and responsible land governance in the Post-2015 Development Agenda, we want to take the debate on soil as the substance of transformation one step further: from setting goals and targets for sustainable development towards the challenging process of implementation. In the Post-2015 Development Agenda, the question of “how” will move centre stage. How will we achieve sustainable soil management in a world of growing demands? To begin the search for an answer, we have to think of soils in the broader water-energy-food-climate nexus. Competing demands placed on a number of scarce resources, including soils, will have to be balanced. To achieve this balancing, integrated resource management as well as coordinated governance approaches are needed. Balancing demands also implies protecting the land rights of those most vulnerable. Sustainable soil management must take a human rights-based approach and needs to be linked to responsible land governance.

The keynote address by Sara Scherr of EcoAgriculture will introduce the landscape approach as one way of operationalising integrated management approaches. In his keynote, Klaus Deininger will present insights from this year’s World Bank Land Conference on linking land tenure and land use. The second part of the session serves to deliver core messages from sessions to the plenary: individual dialogue sessions will report the results of their discussions via call-ins from the floor. A panel of established experts will respond to these call-ins. Johan L. Kuylenstierna of the Stockholm Environment Institute will close the panel by drawing conclusions on an integrated Post-2015 Development Agenda.

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Sara Scherr
President & CEO, EcoAgriculture Partners (United States of America)

Sara Scherr is an agricultural and natural resource economist specialising in land management policy in tropical developing countries. Founder of EcoAgriculture Partners, she now serves as its president and CEO. In 2011 she led the founding of the Landscapes for People, Food and Nature Initiative, for which EcoAgriculture Partners now serves as secretariat. Sara Scherr is widely published in scientific and policy literature, and has been a leading voice globally in promoting the restoration of degraded agricultural lands and new approaches for integrated landscape management.

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Klaus Deininger
Lead Economist, Development Economics Group, World Bank (United States of America)

Klaus Deininger, is a Lead Economist in Agriculture and Rural Development unit of the Development Research Group at the World Bank. His areas of research focus on income and asset inequality and its relationship to poverty reduction and growth; access to land, land markets and land reform and their impact on household welfare and agricultural productivity; land tenure and its impact on investment, including environmental sustainability: and capacity building (including the use of quantitative and qualitative methods) for policy analysis and evaluation, mainly in the Africa, Central America, and East Asia Regions. He is a German national with a Ph.D. in Applied Economics from the University of Minnesota, an MA in Agricultural Economics from the University of Berlin, and an MA in theology from the University of Bonn.

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Austin Tibu
Acting Deputy Director, Land Resources Conservation (Malawi)
Ministry of Agriculture, Water Development and Irrigation (Malawi)

Austin Tibu has been working in Agriculture and Natural Resources Management sectors since 2003. He is an expert in the field of agriculture, climate-change and food security inter-linkages. While at District, Regional and National level, Austin Tibu has implemented community based natural resources management programs and has experiences on policy and advisory roles on linking land degradation, siltation and
its downstream effects using integrated approaches. He is national focal point for several soil and watershed management projects in Malawi.

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Moujahed Achouri
Moujahed Achouri, Director, Land and Water Division, FAO – Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Italy)

Moujahed Achouri, a national of Tunisia, is a specialist in soil and water conservation as well as in watershed management sciences, with a broad coverage of technical and socio-economic related sciences and disciplines. He started his professional career in 1982 in the Forestry Department of the Ministry of Agriculture in Tunisia. His experience with International Organizations started in 1988 when he served for FAO/UNDP as National Chief Technical Advisor. He joined FAO in 1995 and since then has worked in Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Egypt and Italy. Before joining the Land and Water Division Moujahed Achouri served in Cairo as Deputy Regional Representative for the Near East and as Head of the Multi-disciplinary Team for Oriental Near East and FAO Representative in Egypt. He holds a B.Sc. in Rural Engineering and Soil and Water Conservation from the Institut National Agronomique de Tunis, Tunisia, and an M.Sc. in Watershed Management Sciences from Utah State University, USA.

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Rainer Horn
President, IUSS – International Union of Soil Sciences

Rainer Horn is a soil physicist at the Christian Albrecht University in Kiel, Germany. He studied Horticulture at the University of Hanover and received his PhD in Soil Science in 1976. After his habilitation at the Technical University Berlin in 1981 has was Professor for Soil Science at the University of Bayreuth from 1982 to 87 and Professor for Soil Science and Soil Protection at Christian Albrecht University Kiel from 1988 to 98. In the same year, he accepted a position as Professor for Soil Science at the Institute for Plant Nutrition and Soil Science at the same university. Rainer Horn will be President of the International Union of Soil Science (IUSS) until the year 2016.

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Johan L. Kuylenstierna
Executive Director, SEI – Stockholm Environment Institute (Sweden)

Johan L. Kuylenstierna is Executive Director of the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), an international research organisation focused on environment/development research for sustainable development. Johan L. Kuylenstierna has previously held positions within the UN system (UNDESA at the UN HQ in NY, WMO in Geneva and FAO in Rome) and has also worked for many years at the Stockholm International Water Institute. He has a background as a consultant focusing on sustainability issues and corporate core value processes in both the private and public sectors. His academic background is in Earth Sciences. He currently holds an adjunct professorship in international water resources at Stockholm University.

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Sofía Monsalve Suárez
Access to Resources Programme Coordinator, International Secretariat of FIAN International – Food First International Action Network (Germany)

Sofía Monsalve Suárez works as the Access to Resources Programme Co-ordinator at the International Secretariat of FIAN International. Since 2006 she has been coordinating the working group on agrarian reform and territory of the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC). The IPC is a global network made up of grassroots organisations of small food producers with wide experience of action and advocacy on issues linked to food sovereignty and agriculture. The IPC has been working since 2002 to bring the voices of social movements and civil society organisations to international forums dealing with issues related to Food Sovereignty, particularly the FAO.

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Jes Weigelt
Global Soil Forum Coordinator, Co-Lead Sustainability Governance Programme, IASS – Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (Germany)

Jes Weigelt heads the Global Soil Forum at the IASS, Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, and is co-lead of the institute’s sustainability governance programme. His work focuses on inclusive learning processes for sustainable soil management and responsible land governance. Prior to his current position, he worked for the International Fund for Agricultural Development and held management and research positions at the Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität Berlin. Jes Weigelt is chair of the European Soil Partnership.