Soil degradation is a global threat to agriculture, ecosystems, and food security, with up to ten million hectares of soil being degraded each year. Globally, agriculture is highly dependent on the prevailing conditions regarding climate, weather, and natural resources like soil. Agricultural production and soil use are already being strongly affected by global climate change and soil degradation. This has large repercussions on farmers’ food security and rural livelihoods. To ensure sustainable agriculture for the current and future population, climate-smart soil protection and rehabilitation (SPR) on farms and fields are urgently needed.

Since 2014, the Global Programme Soil Protection and Rehabilitation (ProSoil) implemented by GIZ on behalf of BMZ implements agroecological approaches for sustainable, climate-smart soil protection and rehabilitation at scale in selected partner countries. ProSoil has adopted proven and upgraded strategies for soil protection and the rehabilitation of degraded soils and it helps partners to leverage lessons learned, evaluate them in terms of their policy relevance and bring experiences into national and international dialogues.

Against this background, HFFA Research GmbH has been commissioned to support the programme in making climate-smart SPR innovations and learning experiences accessible and visible to the international climate community and raising awareness of international stakeholders of benefits and innovations related to SPR.

The goal of the assignment is to produce a publication describing key innovations for climate-smart SPR measures, reviewing existing evidence and common learnings in this area. The working title of the publication is “Innovations for climate smart soil protection and rehabilitation” and targets the international (climate) donor and development practitioner community. The final product will be used to support GIZ ProSoil in its communication and knowledge sharing strategy with the aim to ensure progress on SPR for the international climate community and emphasize their relevance and scaling potential of approaches/technologies to facilitate uptake by other actors.