 So, we are ready to start with your permission, Director General. My name is Eduardo Mansoor. I am the Director of the Office of Climate Change, Biodiversity and Environment. I'm speaking to you from the FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy, and I'm very honored to be the moderator of this webinar to launch a very important report, the Global Assessment of Soil Pollution. Today, we are also celebrating, press-celebrating the World Environment Day tomorrow, 5 June. So, nothing more opportune for having here the heads of the FAO, Dr. Chudoniu, the head of the UN Environment, Dr. Inger Andersen, his Excellency, Dr. David Choketwanka, and others, the experts and panelists that are joining us in this launching event, which is also part of the celebrations of the launching of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which is being formally launched today. The UN Decade is a Decade declared by UN General Assembly from 2021 to 2030, and the official launching is today and tomorrow in the framework of the World Environment Day. Let me just in one minute inform the participants, and we are already over 500 participants actually with us. We have a very large registration of 3,400 participants, so I would expect that more will join during this session. I would just like to welcome every one of you from the different parts of the world. We have people from colleagues from the east, from the west, and here from this part of the world. So, good evening, good afternoon, good morning, wherever you are. If you have used please the chat for any specific comment, but there is in your menu an option for questions and answers. So, if you want to put questions and receive answers from the team that is assisting the organization of this webinar, both from FAO Global Soil Partnership and from the United Nations Environment Program, please place your comments on the Q&A session of the Zoom. We are all getting familiar with this new reality of using these technologies. Another one that is available in this session are interpretation. We have the interpretation button. You are welcome to use the interpretation as you feel more comfortable with. Without further ado, it's my big honor to invite the Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FAO, Dr. Chudong Yu, to introduce to this webinar his opening remarks. Dr. Chudong Yu, honor to give you the floor. Thank you, Eduardo Manso. Honorable Vice President David Chokak and Ms. Inga Anise and dear colleagues, welcome you to the launch of the Global Assessment of Soil Pollution Report. Soil health is a fundamental issue for plant health. And also, I would like to start to congratulate all my colleagues. Tomorrow, we will have an environment, but since it's Saturday, so I started to congratulate you and greetings to all of us. Let's work hard to make sustainable environment, healthy environment, a good environment, what you said, you like to say. Soil pollution, jeopardizing crop yield, dietary, nutrition, food safety, rural incomes, human health, and the health of our ecosystem. Soil protection is of the ultimate importance to ensure the success of our future agri-food systems ecosystem restoration and all lives on the earth. As revealed in this report, industry and money activists able and industrial waste and the unsustainable agricultural practice are the main source of the driving soil pollution worth. With the rapid publish growth and urbanization industrialization, annual waste is projected to increase to 3.4 billion tons in 2050. The use of plastic in agriculture has also increased greatly in the recent decades, rebranding a significant source of soil and the environment pollution. About 80 percent of the marine pollution come from land-based activities. Erosion of polluted soil contributed to the excessive loading of the plants, nutrients, and organic chemicals into lakes, rivers, and the sea. Ladies and gentlemen, all these hard effects from the report should push us to act now. Our society wants more nutrients and safe food, free of the contaminants, and the pathogens. This is the reflecting in our work how to transform our agri-food systems for better production, better nutrition, a better environment, a better life, leaving no one behind. We must address the soil fertility, soil biodiversity, and soil pollution to achieve the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. Bringing together science and policy to understand the status, causes, impacts, and the pollution to soil pollution is crucial. Today's global standard report on soil pollution with response to the UA environment assemblies resolution manages soil pollution to achieve sustainable development. It is a result of the inclusive process with scientists from around the world, consolidating science behind the soil pollution and proposing concrete action. I really appreciate all the contributions from the scientific community, and my colleague used to be, I was also a scientist. I know it's of the science-based and the fundamental, solid fundamentals is first step, but we need more politicians, more economists, more other key players to work together. I'm hopeful that the findings of this report will pave the way for joint efforts to stop soil pollution and build up the coherent solution for soil recovery. We need a soil recovery because we have more people to be well fed by 2050, about 10 billion population to come. Distinguished participants boosting soil health and providing soil pollution must be part of the international agendas. That's included UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, as well as the upcoming U.S. conference on climate change, biodiversity, and the densification and the UN Food Summit, and others. Together, we can make health science for all and for long. Thank you. Over to you. Thank you very much, Director General, for your inspiring words and for recalling that this meeting today, this webinar today, was nurtured in May 2018, when FAO hosted the Global Symposium on Soil Pollution following the UNEA, the United Nations Environmental Assembly Resolution, to address soil pollution. That day, Director General, we committed to produce a global assessment on this very important topic that is affecting all of us and that we are so proud to be here today, together with our sister agency, UNEP, presenting the result of the assessment. Following up on the important of heavy soil pollution addressed on the ground, I'm very honored to invite his Excellency, Senior David Choppe-Kewanka, Vice President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, to address some words from Bolivia. Excellency is an honor to pass on the word. You are very welcome. De dialogar obligación de comunicarnos. Es un código de la cultura de la vida que se ha desistido durante más de 500 años. Por milenios los pueblos de la vía yala, los pueblos originarios, los pueblos indígenas, las culturas milenarias vivimos y producimos una cultura en consonancia con la vida. Escuchando a la vida, escuchando a la tierra, sintiendo el latir de los glaciares, escuchando el rugir del jaguar de la selva verde, dialogando con el abuelo fuego, con el agua, con nuestras montañas, mediante nuestras ceremonias ancestrales. Nunca nos hemos alejado de nuestra madre tiesa. Siguimos caminando con respeto al agua, con respeto al abuelo fuego, con respeto a nuestras montañas, con respeto a las plantas, con respeto a las abejas, con respeto al tajpacha, todo lo que existe, todo lo que sabemos, aprendemos de la naturaleza, ella nos enseña a cuidar la vida, por eso lo llamamos pachamama, es decir, madre tiesa, porque ella es la que nos cuida, nos enseña, sostiene y nos alimenta, aprendimos de ella a vivir en complementariedad, consenso, equilibrio y en armonía, sin violentar las leyes de la naturaleza. Hoy, como consecuencia de la implementación de las leyes hechas por el hombre, la modernidad es un modelo de desarrollo occidental capitalista, el mundo, nuestra madre tiesa, está al borde del colapso global. Todo está en riesgo, todo está en peligro, nuestros ríos, océanos, glaciares, montañas, los bosques, las plantas, las aves, las abejas, todo está en riesgo, la vida está en riesgo. Hablar del suelo hoy es hablar de cómo los ciclos vitales del planeta que dieron origen a la vida están siendo alterados por los seres humanos, que en su ambición desmedida están provocando las condiciones para una catástrofe. Es cierto que no todos tenemos la misma responsabilidad en el colapso que se abecina, los desames petroleros, la contaminación minera, la producción de agrotóxicos que contaminan los suelos y matan a las abejas, son provocadas por un puñado de transnacionales y bancos que anteponen sus ganancias a la vida. No hay duda de que el capitalismo nos está llevando a mercantilizar y saquear la naturaleza a la extrema de destruir nuestro propio hogar, dejando ruinas y más ruinas todos los días. Pero no todo está perdido, es tiempo de volver al camino del respeto a la madre tierra, volver a ser jibuasa, jibuasa es otro código que han que se ha desistido al occidente, jibuasa no soy yo somos nosotros, jibuasa es la muerte del egocentrismo, jibuasa es la muerte del antropocentrismo y del eurocentrismo. Y cuando hablamos de nosotros, no solo hablamos de los seres humanos, hablamos de todos los seres, de todos los que nos alimentamos con la leche de la madre tierra que es el agua, los seres humanos nos alimentamos con la leche de la madre tierra que es el agua, las plantas se alimentan con la leche de la madre tierra que es el agua, The animals feed on the milk of the mother earth that is the water. We are brothers, we are children of the Pachamama. To do Kumara again is another code. Kumara means healthy life. It means healthy soil. It means healthy air. It means healthy water. We humans need to get out of our enclaustration, of the Anthropocene and wake up our Kawana. Look beyond what our eyes see. Look from our hearts. Look inside. Look from our mountains, from our plants. To transcend the hegemony of the mercantilist logic of the West is to find the triathlete of our ancestors consistent in balance, complementarity and harmony. We know that the return to the culture of life, of brotherhood, the return to the path of truth is near. That is why we speak of the Pachakuti code. Pacha, guarantee balance in all time and space. Kuti, return. We need to return to the path of balance. For all of this, we insist on proposing the General Assembly of the United Nations, to convene an assembly of the land for governments and peoples of the world. We discuss all these crises, the environmental crisis, energy crisis, health crisis, food crisis, institutional crisis. We discuss life from a non-anthropocentric perspective to work on the defense of the rights of Mother Earth. We call to embrace life. We call to embrace brotherhood, inclusion, complementarity, unity, harmony. We call to embrace peace and overcome capitalism, racism, egocentrism, anthropocentrism, colonialism, patriarchy, which are the cause of the destruction of Mother Earth. We build together a new civilizatory horizon, a new horizon of life that allows us to establish the balance of the planet, establish the balance of our Mother Earth, because Mother Earth is not only Mother Earth, Mother Earth guarantees balance in all time and space. Mother Earth is Mother Earth, not sick. Mother Earth is Mother Earth in balance. We hear the cry of pain from our forests, rivers, mountains, and we awaken the communal energy to save our children and the children of our children and we forge the path of encounter with our Pachamama, the encounter with life, with happiness. Hail to our Mother Earth. Thank you very much, Don David, for your touching, your speech. We are very honored to have you here, sir. It was impressive and touching your speech. We are about to reach 900 participants that have been attentive in the last few years. I think it paid off for the fact that you are very early in the morning. I understand it's 6 a.m. in La Paz, and you decided to be live with us to participate in this meeting. Very honored. Continuing with the opening session of this webinar, it's my pleasure to invite the Executive Director, Executive Director of the United Nations Environmental Research Foundation, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program, Dr. Inge Anderson, to speak to us on the importance of this event in the framework of soil pollution, of pollution in general, and the celebration of the World Environment Day. Dr. Anderson, the floor is yours. Thank you so much, and like you, let me just extend greetings to his excellency, David Chokahokua, for his extraordinary remarks and the way in which he conveyed the importance of looking after Mother Earth. Indeed, I could not agree with you more, excellency, that indeed it is humanity's toxic trail. It is humanity's destruction of our world that has led us to the situation where we are today, facing these crisis of enormous proportion. And I thank you for the way in which you conveyed them. Let me also thank my dear brother, Director General John Chu, the head of FAO for his remarks. Look, this report comes out amid a time of these terrifying planetary crisis that we've just heard his excellency speak to. The crisis of climate change, the crisis of biodiversity, and the crisis of major loss, and the crisis of pollution and waste. That triple crisis of climate, biodiversity and pollution threatens human health, threatens our well-being, our equality, and our peace. But it also comes out as we embark on the most ambitious effort that we have ever done to do something about that triple crisis. And here I am referring to the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Because we understand that this decade is a great opportunity to change course, a great opportunity to mobilize that global movement to halt, to reverse, and to repair the damage that humanity has caused to the natural world. A great opportunity to deliver under sustainable development goals to slow climate change and to buy time to decarbonize our economies and our societies. As an international community, we must deliver on our commitments to protect and restore ecosystems during this decade. And backing healthy and productive soils must be the foundational element to the decade for so many reasons. Over 90% of our food comes from the soil. It is that patch of mama that delivers us our well-being. It stores also more carbon than the atmosphere and all over the world's vegetation combined. It holds incredible biodiversity from worms to microbes that maintain soil fertility. And overall soil biodiversity and soil carbon contribute an amazing amount of effort as well as financial contribution to the ecosystems services that we get globally every year. So yes, it's so easy to take soil for granted. It's dirt, it's sand. It is just there. It is beneath our feet. It is in our fields, in our gardens, our window boxes. And taking that for granted, maybe most people assume that it is endless and indestructible. But this report, as has just been summarized by Dr. Chu, tells us something else. The restoration decade has to focus on addressing the pollution of the soil ecosystem for the sake of our own, yes, but also for the sake of our planet, that Pacha Mama. So how do we do this? Well, let me lay out some actions in four areas, largely drawing from the report and from UNEP's framework for pollution-free planet. First, and this is so blindingly obvious, we have to stop the pollution. None of us would pour a cocktail of toxic chemicals into a potted plant and then eat the tomatoes that we grew from there for dinner if we grew anything at all. Yet that is what we're doing on a global scale. In mining, in industry, in waste, in unsustainable agricultural practices, we are poisoning the soils and so ourselves. It has to stop. We can start in agriculture by adopting sustainable practices such as integrated pest management guidelines for more efficient use of, and more efficient use of fertilizers and environmentally friendly pesticides. Ahead of the World Food System Summit, we should be thinking about more diverse and regenerative cropping systems. Systems that accommodate healthy crop rotation and enable more diverse diets will reduce the pressure on the soil and allow for degraded and polluted soil to recover in a productive way. We can stop uncontrolled dumping and deal with pollutants before they start leaking. We can invest in long-term environmental monitoring following industrial closures and we can ensure that people have the rights defended under the law to call out those who transgress, those who pollute and have the full justice of the law come after them. At the systemic level, we can accelerate the transition to sustainable consumption and production so that we can reduce the impact which goes into the soil in terms of pollution. Applying these basic principles of circularity and resource efficiency, reduce, reuse, recycle, repurpose, repair will protect our soil and ease the triple planetary crisis. So that's the first point. We can just stop the pollution. The second thing is we have to reverse the damage we've already done to clean up contaminated sites for the health of local communities, for the health of Pachamama, to allow the land to deliver ecosystem services to free up land for sustainable agriculture production, preventing the need for further conversion of untouched land. But we have to do the clean up the right way. There is a nursery rhyme at least in the English language in which an old lady who swallows a fly tried to fix the problem by swallowing a spider and then she swallows a bird and increasingly every creature that she swallows is a larger creature and it doesn't end well as you can imagine in the nursery rhyme. So cleaning up sites mechanically or by using chemicals is like that lady swallowing an ever increasing creature because that poses similar risks in eliminating the contaminant we can cause bigger ecosystem damage and that is why nature-based soil remediation techniques are so important as the report shows. There are many different plants and organisms that can eliminate pollutants and restore the soil balance. Given our need to live in harmony with nature this is where our focus should be on. And let us be clear let the polluters pay this is the basic principles that our parents taught us and parents today teach their children you make a mess you clean it up you're responsible. So that's my second point. Very closely linked to the prior we need much stronger enforcement more harmful soil contaminants are regulated by global conventions such as a Basel, the Stockholm and the Rotterdam conventions and the Minamata conventions that we in UNEP proudly host. There are many places supplemented by regional agreements and by national laws. These conventions have achieved much but could do more with stronger implementation and coordination equally countries that are not parties to these conventions should be strongly encouraged to bring them into force and to apply all necessary resources. And we also need a stronger push as I mentioned on law and enforcement through the courts and protecting environmental defenders and so that they are not persecuted but rather that they are protected and listened to under the law. This is increasingly happening we saw just last week a Dutch court ordered a major oil company to slash emissions by 2030. And my final point we need to make sure that the science travels what we know need to be out there this report strengthens the science and soil pollution now we need to make sure that it gets to the right people not just to politicians and scientists to farmers to businesses to consumers to law enforcement officers we need everyone to understand that healthy soils mean healthy people and a healthy planet so as we launch the UN Decade on Restoration we must ensure that everybody does what they can to ensure soil health through halting and reversing pollution and that will be essential for the success of this decade the sustainable development goals the coming new biodiversity framework and at the end the very future of humanity we at UNEP thank our partners at the FAO for their valuable partnership as we take this to action to the front line this crucial issue to look forward and we look forward to a long and successful collaboration where we all seek solutions to soil pollution thank you Thank you so much Inger for the outstanding speech and very visual when you describe the four steps towards addressing pollution and soil pollution I you can imagine the amount of chat message that came in support of your speech here we are reaching a thousand participants listening to us live at this very moment and it was very clear that without healthy soils we are not having healthy foods without healthy foods we are not having healthy crops and healthy lives are the best defense we have against the different threats we are facing including the pandemic that we are facing we cannot close this launching event without listening from our colleagues of the sister agents World Health Organization and unfortunately the director of environment climate change and health of WHO was not available at this time to come to us but she took the trouble to record a video and she sent the message to us through a video so let me welcome you to see the video of Dr. Neda from WHO on soil pollution and health colleagues from the GSP that have the techniques can you please launch the video of Dr. Neda Excellencies ladies and gentlemen dear colleagues from FAO and UNEP thank you very much for this opportunity we are very happy to share with you a moment of this important event you know for the World Health Organization but for the health community at large zero pollution means 100 health and therefore is extremely important what you are discussing here today and will have a very positive or negative impact on our health if the right decision or the wrong ones are taken many governments are at the moment allocating very important financial resources for the recovery after COVID-19 and we need to make sure that those investments are going into the right direction to protect people's health to make sure that we will have a healthy and green and fair recovery since we know many of the causes that took us where we are now and one of those causes is the fact that we have been polluting our soil polluting our air polluting our water and obviously you will agree with me that this doesn't represent a very strong pillar if we want to maintain the health of the people we learned that fighting against any infectious agent emerging infectious agent like SARS-CoV-2 means fighting the virus and developing vaccines and diagnosis treatment but it means as well going upstream and understanding what's happened and now we know that one of the reasons where we are much more vulnerable and where new emerging infectious agents can break that barrier between the animal species and human species because we have been treating our nature in a very bad way we have been destroying and polluting much we have been destroying biodiversity we have been practicing very aggressive agricultural methods and sometimes even very polluting ones and therefore we are putting at risk and increasing the vulnerability for human health of course animal health as well and environmental health this approach now of one health is very attractive we have been promoting this concept and working on this concept for many years now and FAO is one of the strong partners of this tripartite agreement for one health but we need to reinforce this concept of the inter-linkages between not only animal health and human health but as well how much we are linked and how much we depend on nature and all the resources that we need for our health are coming from nature and therefore we are very happy that our manifesto for healthy and green recovery containing six prescriptions is very much accepted by many because it's in fact a question of common sense investments one of the prescriptions under the manifesto is exactly that we need to make sure that we have very sustainable food systems we do not pollute our soil we do not put at risk that the healthy diets and the nutrition the food that we need for our population and again don't polluting everything we touch there is no limit for ambition on public health and for us what you are doing today at this important meeting is part of our agenda on public health as it is the climate change negotiations and the COP we know that if we tackle the causes of climate change there will be enormous benefits of reducing our pollution and by doing so we will benefit enormously and reduce the number of deaths caused by exposure to our pollution similar soil pollution we know how much we depend on agricultural practices and on the way we will treat our resources and therefore I know that the conclusions of this important report that you are launching today are very much linked to the health of our people I thank you once again for this opportunity I trust that you will be very successful and on behalf of WTO thank you very much and we keep certainly strongly collaborating all of us thank you very much thank you very much for the colleagues in the WTO for sending the message of Dr. Neda in her inspiring words her reference to our joint work under the One Health and we are as I mentioned about reaching a thousand participants and some questions are popping up I'm very happy to see them in the Q&A part of the session some of them are I haven't seen the report you are talking about you are here for a launching of report where is it don't worry we are exactly teasing your interest it took us three years from the symposium on global soil pollution in May 2018 to today to produce the report I'm privileged to have here one copy and soon you are going to have it online we are being paper smart the publication hard copies only a summary for policymakers 60 pages the whole set of document will be available online and it's free and I'm going to introduce it to you now through my colleagues they have prepared a nice video on position in the issue of soil pollution and immediately after a colleague from the global soil partnership will present the report and that's the moment that the report will come live on the link that we are going to provide to you in the chat and on the different social media tools that are being used here please my other colleague Isabella already put in the chat the hashtag stop soil pollution for us to adhere if you want to help us promote this event promote the end of soil pollution and promote the celebration of the UNDK system restoration of the World Environment Day again from the colleagues of the organization of the event can you please launch the video on soil pollution that will pre-introduce the report thank you soil pollution a hidden reality beneath our feet lurks a hidden danger soil pollution soil pollution can be invisible and seems far away and everyone is affected soil pollution is a worldwide problem which degrades our soils poisons the food we eat the water we drink and the air we breathe posing a serious risk to food security human health and the environment soils have a great potential to filter and buffer contaminants degrading and attenuating the negative effects of pollutants the capacity is finite most of the pollutants originate from human activities such as unsustainable farming practices industrial activity and mining untreated urban waste and other non-environmental friendly practices as technology evolves scientists are able to identify previously undetected pollutants but at the same time these technological improvements lead to new contaminants being released into the environment the sustainable development goals two, three, twelve and fifteen have targets which command direct consideration of soil resources especially soil pollution and degradation in relation to food security the consensus achieved on the declaration on soil pollution during the last UN environment assembly is a clear sign of global determination to tackle pollution and its causes it is time to uncover this threatening reality combating soil pollution requires us to join forces and turn determination into action it is the time to fight soil pollution be the solution to soil pollution I hope you have enjoyed this video as much as I did and I think it's a good junction for me to recognize the support that we received for the Global Symposium on Soil Pollution and for the publication of the report from the the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation the Ministry of Agriculture Nature and Food Quality of the Netherlands the European Commission the Suisse Federation the from the Ministry of Europe and the Foreign Affairs of the Government of France without their support we would not be able to produce the information that this year how this information has been generated we had a colleague that we hired just before this symposium to help us put up this symposium and she organized everything. I am a professional doctor from now working with us in the Global Soil Partnership until the time Dr. Natalia Rodriguez I am very honored to welcome you to present the report Global Assessment of Soil Pollution that has been done since the symposium Natalia, the floor is yours Thank you so much Eduardo and thank you for your excellencies for such an inspiring work it has been really nice to listen to you allow me to share my screen okay so thank you again excellencies, dear participants it is a great honor for me to launch this report today because it has been a long process and we are very proud to have it ready so please allow me to do so in Spanish okay in 2015 the FAO launched the report about the situation of the resources of the soil in the world this represents the first global assessment of the state of the soils and of the main threats for the operation of the soil in which contamination is identified as one of them however it was made clear that the information about the contamination of the soil was not available in all regions it was very fragmented and without harmonizing the studies on the contamination of the soil have been shot since then allowing us to have a wider image but still incomplete in 2017 a very important milestone was produced in the international community since the Ministry of the Environment of 173 countries signed the UNEA-3 resolution in which it is stated that the contamination of the soil in 2030 is sustainable in parallel the FAO and the World Alliance for the soil organize the world symposium about the contamination of the soil by hand the UNEA program for the environment the World Health Organization and the secretariat of the chemical conventions this symposium brought by hand to all experts to put the most updated information on the table and for the search for solutions and these solutions will be plasmated in the document to be the solution to the contamination of the soil which established our agenda of action in response to the UNEA-3 and to the document about the contamination of the soil the World Alliance for the soil by hand of UNEP they started the preparation of this report that we are launching today it has been a long process in which many experts were identified to contribute they took into account open discussions information was reviewed and there was also a reduction process and review by pairs of the report more than 200 experts have participated in a way or another in the development of this report and I take this opportunity to thank each one of them for their support and especially my colleague in the PENUMA Abdelkader Benzada the report is divided into 14 chapters and presents information about the main contaminants of the soil, also describes the main sources of contamination of the soil both natural and anthropological impacts on human, environmental and socio-economic also includes an evaluation of the regional situation that my colleagues will present and summarize some of the best techniques available for management and remediation of contaminated soils including solutions based on nature and finally offers a way to effectively address the contamination of the soil at the world level the report is already available in line and my colleagues this link that you see here in my presentation in the chat so that you can consult it one of the main results of this report is the solid evidence that we have found that the contamination of the soil poses a great threat for the consequences of the objectives of sustainable development it is especially important for the nexopobresa food and health the contamination of the soil reduces the yield, the security and the quality of the crops which leads to a reduction of the income of rural populations and hits harder for putting some data because around 79% of people who live in extreme poverty do it in rural areas and depend on the great measure of agriculture for their subsistence but what happens that the contamination of the soil produced by agricultural productivity between 15% and 25% although values have been recorded even higher, as in the case of Ghana where the contamination of the soil produced by a mining area nearby reduced productivity of 40% in just 8 years World Health Organization calculates that around 16% of the total mortality worldwide is attributed to diseases related to environmental contamination of the water, of the air and of the soil and is concentrated in most of the less developed countries however the burden of disease that can only be attributed to the contamination of the soil is still a great unknown and could be seriously underestimated the contamination of the soil also affects the quality of the water the exibition of contaminants or the mobilization of nutrients leads to the contamination of the water surface and the ultrophization of water and ocean the annual cost of eliminating those contaminants such as nitrates, phosphates, plagues such as pathogens to meet the standards of water and to restore ecologically these affected areas of ultrophization makes thousands of millions of dollars a year the transportation and the bad management of waste is two of the main causes of the contamination of the soil the 55% of the world population urban green spaces represent great opportunities for our personal, social development for our health and for our well-being but if they get contaminated there will be more exposure to the contamination of the soil putting a risk also to that 55% the contamination of the soil is also a serious threat for the environment in 2018 they applied 9 million tons of synthetic fertilizers nitrogen in the world the excess of nitrogen in the soil releases the atmosphere in the form of nitrous oxide which causes emissions of 700,000 equivalent of carbon dioxide accelerating the climate change and counteracting any effort that we are making against it also around 80% of the marine pollution proceeds from terrestrial activity plastics, nutrients and organic chemical contaminants are the main contaminants of the soil that cause a rapid deterioration of marine ecosystems the contamination of the soil also causes a chain reaction in the terrestrial ecosystems and produces a serious alteration of the functioning of the populations the contaminants of the soil are transferred to the food chain until human beings arrive producing the contamination and degradation of entire ecosystems despite all the efforts made to date our understanding of the interactions between the multiple contaminants that are in the soil and its combined effect on the organisms is still scarce and this is recorded by the appearance of new contaminants about which the information available is very limited this report shows that the contamination of the soil is one of the main threats for the soils in the world and they put in danger the performance of key ecosystem services such as the supply of food and nutrients, the availability of clean water and the conservation of biodiversity of the soil the contaminants present on the soil affect practically all our organisms causing multiple diseases and even death the health of the ecosystems and human health are interconnected and the soil acts as a nexus for all of them therefore, as our colleague from the OMS said the soil must be considered as a key point in the strategy a single health or one health since this cannot be addressed in an effective way without damaging the contamination of the soil the report also shows that industrial activities mining, the bad management of waste the unsustainable agriculture the extraction and processing of fossil fuels and transport are the main sources of contamination of the soil and it is expected that the contamination of the soil will increase unless there is a rapid change in the production and consumption towards a green and circular economy also, the normative and legislative standards are key in this change towards a circular economy and the global application of the principle of who contaminates is essential to prevent and reduce the damage therefore, we must insist to all countries to put this principle into practice along with the climate change environmental contamination and especially the contamination of the soil is one of the main global challenges that we face today as humanity and it is a trans-frontal problem that global requirements are coordinated if we want to guarantee identification, management and remediation of contaminated soils as well as the adoption of preventive measures it is necessary to reinforce the communication channels between the academy the responsible politicians and the society this will guarantee that all the interested parts have opportunity information and scientific basis about the possible threats that plant the contamination of the soil and can thus make decisions and to finish I present our proposal based on scientific evidence gathered for this report as well as the opinion of experts who have participated in different forums of the world alliance for the soil and the program of the United Nations for the environment which can be summarized in four key points in the first place we must improve the knowledge about the contamination of the soil from identification and cartography to follow-up the creation of the global system of surveillance and information about the contamination of the soil so that we can support the countries in data collection and harmonized information we also want to reinforce the legislative framework and technical actions without them nothing can be carried out and we must advocate for a global commitment to prevent, stop and remedy the contamination of the soil in the framework as it has already mentioned such as the contamination of the soil or to a free planet of contamination also taking advantage of efforts and regional objectives as can be the European green pact we must improve the awareness and communication through a campaign of global awareness and promotion of a responsible and respectful consumption with the environment will be key of our actions we must increase a circular economy by putting a special emphasis on reducing, reuse recycle and recover and finally we must increase the international cooperation facilitate the transfer of scientific knowledge in in open media to the public and advocate for the transfer of technology and the creation of crossed capacities for the entire cycle of the contamination of the soil the world alliance for the soil and the program of the United Nations for the environment is ready to advance this global agenda about the contamination of the soil in collaboration with all those interested and thus achieve among all a world with zero contamination and to conclude I would like to finish my presentation with this reflection since today we also celebrate the launch of the decade of restoration of the ecosystem as we strive to restore 350 million hectares of land in the framework of the UN Decade and not neglect the role of healthy soils to restore world ecosystems we must address soil pollution and restore soil health and ecosystem services it supports thank you very much Muchísimas gracias Natalia Muchísimas gracias Natalia again when we are here over a thousand participants attending we can you can imagine during the presentation the number of chats questions that popped up including on the the how to get the report because now it's out there you saw it in the chat it's available for for online reading we are trying to be as much paper smart as you can we encourage you to use it electronically but my colleagues will confirm to me if it will be available for downloading and the PDF format as well I will get the answer to you in a minute I have some yes also some comments in terms of the fact that Natalia spoke in Spanish remind you that the interpretation is available in the tree language please access it when you need most of our presenters and specially the director general of FAO in the executive director of UNEP mentioned to us the importance of acting on the ground yes we are celebrating today anticipated the launching of the UNDK on ecosystem restoration in the world environment day 5 June which celebrate tomorrow but we have to look at how we are going to do to address soil pollution to be the solution to soil pollution to stop soil pollution and that happens on the ground that happens in the countries with the farmers the people that have direct interaction with it so that's why we decided to invite seven colleagues from different regions to speak to us what's the situation of what's the status of soil pollution at their regions this report that you are reading today is the production of Natalia amongst 53 authors that have engaged in the results we would like to have your feedback that will pass to all of them we are firm believers that actions are on the ground and that no one has the solution alone so we have to work together on this and it's my pleasure and my honor to invite the first speaker from the University of Newcastle in Australia speaking about the soil pollution status in Asia Pacific Dr. Ravi Naidu can I see you thank you so much you may unmute unmute your mic please thank you let me just share my screen Ravi please no more than five minutes we have seven speakers from seven regions in the world okay yes you may put it in presentation mode it was there it's not anymore yes I'm just trying to figure out yeah we are seeing it now can you see it now yes but put in presentation mode okay just click there in the presentation mode it is presentation mode and just wonder why we don't see that okay you may move ahead for the question of time just scroll through this I think we can see this okay thank you thank you thank you very much Eduardo and my sincere apologies I wonder why it is not in presentation mode thank you very much Eduardo and I also want to thank FAO the team this is an absolutely outstanding piece of work and we thank the team for inviting us to come up with the report on global assessment of soil pollution for the Asia Pacific region this report that we have the focus of this as I mentioned the Asia Pacific led by myself and Dr. Biswas along with a team of contributors from a number of countries Professor Chen Dr. Jit Rahman, Rukadwan Tim Lee Phenaret Khan and Vijay Vardhan from all from different countries in the Asia Pacific region what is important to note is that Asia Pacific region brings a lot of diversity on a number of fronts on the one hand when you look at the economic status of these countries they're very considerably between from country to country the business activities vary the consumer lifestyles vary and if the policies that they have can also vary and as a consequence of that there are huge differences in the appreciation of sustainable development when you just look at the economic status of this country if you look at the figure we have the majority of these countries in the low to upper middle income categories and these are the ones that are painted blue and deep blue we have lower medical income countries quite a number of them and we have middle income countries quite large if you look at here for instance and then a couple of countries that are classed as high income countries the very fact that the lower and middle income countries are aspiring to develop and also grow the economies there's a huge push towards industrial development as well because it provides as a consequence of this if you look at the extent and severity of environmental contamination it can vary quite a lot depending on what country you're looking at going from New Zealand, Australia all the way to Asian countries as well the sources of pollution that you see in these countries it could be natural and also it could be human when you look at natural irrespective of which country you go to we always have naturally occurring contaminants an example for instance arsenic this was always present there but human activities that have exposed this and now we have very large areas of land contaminated with arsenic through irrigation using water that was arsenic contaminated New Zealand on the other hand eruptions have led to diffuse contamination with mercury and some of the other heavy metal waste then you also have naturally occurring for example bushfires that have led to extensive diffuse contamination from polyamide hydrocarbons as opposed to naturally occurring or geogenic contaminants when we look at human made contaminants they push towards economic global economy particularly developing countries wanting to be the same as other countries massive increase in industrial activities including mining use of other chemicals energy production, transport and solid waste that they generate have led to extensive contamination as well just for example if you look at human made mining Asia Pacific region Yes Ravi we just we are going to show your slides from here okay and if you can see it now you can guide and my colleague will be passing them according to you oh thank you very much that would be easier for you and for us can you go back please on the slide one more yes so if we just look at mining for example coal mining Asia Pacific region produce far more than any other country and while coal itself might not be seen as pollutant but when you burn it emissions that we generate when we mine it the degradation, land degradation all of these contributes towards the contamination of the environment solid waste every individual we generate a ton of thousand kilograms of solid waste annually what do we do with this are we able to manage this the question that we are asking now if you look at Asian countries we use far more than some of the developed countries as well and that is leading to extensive diffuse contamination of of our environment clearly we do need policies I'll talk about later to manage this extend and severity of contamination that we see in the region next slide please thanks thank you here is one example of paper that was published in 2019 I believe this is an excellent paper by Zeng and his co-authors and if you look at what they have published that 22.1% of China's farmland soil presence a mixture of contaminants and just on the left-hand side you can see the number of samples that they took not many researchers would do this extensive number of samples confirming that 22.1% of China's farmland soil is contaminated 20.8% of soils are likely to pose a considerogenic risk to their adult population and even greater risk to children say if you look at the left-hand side here again and then going beyond that they talk about a number of provinces Yunnan, Hunan, and Hui, Hunan, and Leonong provinces they should be controlled as a priority because of severity and high risk to human health and this is on the right hand side again an excellent reflection of what they are confronted with from pollution perspective clean this is green versus severe contamination which is red and the top one here A is a number of polluted areas large areas as well next please next slide so where are we with regards to legal frameworks addressing soil pollution every country when you take a survey they all say that yes we have a policy on an environment but then adherence to the policies seems to be a major challenge and that's what the countries are saying that they're pressed to tackle waste management chemical pollution specific to soil pollution response varies considerably there's no regional convention on soil protection or soil pollution prevention in the region and controls currently exist in the Asia Pacific region quite unlike for example European Union Europe you do have EU coming together and they work together from soil pollution perspective plus a whole lot of other environmental policies when you look at national legal frameworks addressing soil pollution there are not many countries that have these some countries touch on these but minimum an example here being Japan had to prevent soil contamination agricultural land soil contamination counter measures at 2002 well Fiji environmental management at 2005 and rural India's policy of Fiji has some aspects as well so this is something we not just should visit but work with these countries to see whether we can have framework that addresses soil pollution can we get to the next slide please so what are the some of the key messages having reviewed pollution status of the Asia Pacific countries we note that many developed countries in the Asia Pacific they have implemented legislation that prevents greater environmental pollution and provides guidance for soil remediation that said in most developing countries in the region they're still struggling to cope with soil pollution largely because the lack of adherence to any policies that they have some of the gaps identified the register of potentially contaminated sites we don't have that but then many developed countries don't have that either a challenge that we face is that we do not have sufficient human resource capacity in the region who are trained to assess manage and clean up environmental contamination so we need to build capacity in the region and hence contaminated assessment is weak in the region. There's a lack of appreciation of source receptor pathways and life cycle analysis from contamination perspective above all of these there's a lack of awareness amongst the people that pollutants do lead to fatalities that's something which we need to bring to the attention of people as well food security and safety issues of consent and there's no soil pollution exclusive guidelines cutting across all of this there's no country in the Asia Pacific region that has policy on diffuse pollution. We have policies on site specific pollution even Australia but there's nothing on diffuse pollution so there is a lot of work that we need to do from awareness perspective working with different countries from policy perspective and also providing support from training perspective as well and nothing is possible in some of these countries unless there is financial support as well can we get to the next one please I don't think so thank you very much and this is just putting a face to the name of contributors that have contributed towards this report wouldn't have been possible if it wasn't for the outstanding contribution from Dr. Vishwas and rest of the team as well Eduardo thank you very much for your patience as well. Thank you so thank you Ravi it's a pleasure to have you with us and to learn so much about this situation in Asia Pacific you went a bit over the time so we have now to put pressure on the next speakers it was interesting to learn from you my next speaker is Ms. Valentina from the Young Evangelista University Czech Republic my pronunciation check is awful but you are most welcome Valentina to talk about the status of soil pollution in Eastern Europe the Caucasus and Central Asia I'm sorry to put pressure on you now but you have to be binded by the five minutes time that we have allocated. Thank you very much Eduardo for introduction I will try to keep five minutes and thank you for possibility to introduce the results of their state with the soil pollution in their countries of Eurasia and here are the main polluters agriculture and agriculture industry followed by chemicals and mining oil industry nuclear activities urban sprawl and military activities former and current and according to the background of the countries there are 12 countries of the Soviet Union which represented this region depending of the cultural and political differences geographical location and socio-economic background the region can be divided into three main subregions Eastern European countries Caucasus republics and Middle Asian republics and I will now open you briefly the state of the soil pollution in the region depending of these subregions the first subregion is represented by the Ukraine Russian Federation Belorussia and Moldova and the biggest soil pollution are caused by the industry industrial accidents agriculture mining and chemicals and the biggest concern in the region is contamination by soil after the Chernobyl catastrophe which happened in 1986 nevertheless 35 years past the situation is still rather serious the dead zone around the Chernobyl is still dangerous which is 30 kilometers and particularly there are secondary pollution through the underground water and food chain and it should be mentioned that according to prognosis the radioactive elements which released in 1986 are now transferring to america this map illustrates the prognosis of the contamination of the region in year 2050 and I will now mention then in 2019 thanks to international foundations different the shelter was built over the Chernobyl station which preserved the release of radioactive elements to the air in case something happened with the destroyed reactor the second the second region was presented by the Caucasus Republic and there are Georgia the Ibarjan and Armenia and in this region the biggest concern are mining sites and industrial complex are bounded after the Soviet area remains the main contributors there particularly the contamination after the nuclear and gas industry here you may see the negative impact to the state of the house in the Upsheron region which is located close to the Caspian sea and thanks to the World Bank support the ecological rehabilitation of two very polluted sites were done in this region by applying the technology dig and dump next region is region of subregion is subregion of Central Asian countries and it is presented by the five countries Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan and here are the common driver of the soil pollution as a mining in particular uranium mining oil and metal sector and military cities during the Soviet area left a legacy of soil polluted with radionuclides trace elements and petroleum products and particularly very dangerous is the situation in Sirdarya river and Ferdinand valley which is strongly contaminated by uranium and hazardous waste and that's why UN resolution called for assistance to remediate this particular territory it should be mentioned that in Turkmenistan the special program was implemented in 2009-2011 which cleaned up 47,000 square meters of territories contaminated by radioactive waste and they were transported and storage in a special storage built in the desert and I want to specifically point the situation with the popes and obsolete pesticides which is common for all the Eurasian region and nevertheless a lot of efforts of international different international foundation organization and support was done for elimination the stockpiles of popes, nevertheless the situation is still rather serious particularly with in some countries of the middle Asia where the access to the information is very weak however there are a good deal in this region with this also pesticides in Moldova so number of international projects some part of the popes and PCB were packaged, transported and destroyed abroad also another good example is from Kazakhstan where 80 tons of electrical transformers and capacitors were incinerated in France in accordance to the governmental program after 2015 and speaking about gaps generally in the region this is a weak access to information knowledge gaps infrastructure and capacity building is necessary here at lack of awareness and political wills and I want to also present some looking forward activities they should be concentrated on improvement of monitoring and reporting exchange of positive experience in between regions for example it could be done with Moldova which is like a leading country in the region in terms of program related to popes also a good coordination should be done between different projects supported by different organization and tracking with local authorities and public and particularly important is involvement of region of experts in order to be successful in implementation and also what is necessary to do this is technology and knowledge transfer thank you very much for your attention I was not five but like seven minutes so fascinating to hear from you and we know that you are addressing very serious pollution problems in the region it's important to see how positive you are looking at the possible solution for this thank you so much without further ado let me invite Mr. Bern Bussian from the Germany is that right ID from the German environment they just as an expert on the topic Bern is going to present us the status in Europe Bern the shorter you can make the more time we have for the other colleagues thank you please open your microphone yes now it's fine it's fine yes and we can see yours good afternoon ladies and gentlemen good evening good evening so you know Europe is diverse but not only in languages also in terms of environmental issues and policies so you know it stopped maybe I can try if the presentation is available here Isabelle can try I I restart sorry yeah try you have a try Isabelle has the presentation Bern she will just thank you so next slide please so Europe your comprises 42 countries and so divided into the EU 27 European countries which are members of the European Union and we have another 15 non-EU member countries and next slide please the EU air comprises about 5 million square kilometers and the EU 42 have about 640 million people and total budget for the EU 25 is about 13 trillion US dollar next slide please so regarding pollution in Europe so the main issue is that we have to look back at long industrial history and that is the main cause for contaminants so we are talking about mineral oils, we are talking about smokestack industries and about organic contaminants for hello guineat and non-hello guineat and so also we have to say we have 2.8 million sites which are suspected to be contaminated so the second issue is agriculture that is because about 25 percent and the quarter is covered by acres and forests and they cause well-known problems and it's pesticide residues we have to talk about, we have to talk about nitrogen inputs and synthetic inputs by synthetic fertilizers but also regarding pollution by menu next slide please next slide please yeah, urban housing so is the next urban housing and transport and the thing is that most of the European population is living in cities and they cause many environmental problems and problems regarding soil pollution then mining activities which is in some regions located in Europe change is definitely in the last centuries that is in central Europe we have less mining we have almost no smoke sector industry that went to Asia so Ravi just told about and last but not least we still suffer problems due to military activities and arms manufacturing industry so next slide please so mapping and monitoring what do we know about soil pollution in Europe so we have regarding chemical background we do have three systems one is a forex which is basically focusing on the geogenic input by elements and then we do we are about less than 1000 something locations have been investigated and we do have the GMS program and the Lukas program project both are in collaboration with the EU commission and joint research centers the most sampling points does have Lukas land use and coverage area frame survey which is not only looking at agricultural sampling locations but also on the whole land cover and so it has almost 22,000 sampling locations and different land uses under investigation so next slide please what are the good news we do have actual data to determine the geochemical background for elements and we have all satisfying data to make detailed assessments and to identify polluted sites what are the bad news the bad news is that we do not have European wide data on non-metal pollutants specifically on organic pollutants like pasty sites, agrochemicals, emerging compounds and personal care products plastics and so on so that means as the recommendation develop and strengthen the inventories that's what we really have to do in Europe from European wide perspective next slide please and what about soil policy we have to look back we are looking back to a history of 70 years already in the 50s we started with European soil survey European soil survey organization started to look at soils and we have a European soil charger from the 70s we have at the end of the last century we started with European soil forum and with European policy actions next slide please what we do have in Europe is a soil semantics strategy we still working on that but we do not have common soil legislation since about 35 different new level policies exist which tackle soil issues and we have we have certain EU directives which tackle soil issues and we have more than 600 national policies but what we do not have is common legislation next slide please what's the way forward first we are working on the soil semantics strategy we have it and we had the second issue is the green deal next slide please where the green deal in its strategies on several and several strategies soil is tackled and go forward with clicking the next slide please and soil pollution is tackled in strategy 216 in several places next please in the strategy 217 preserving the strong ecosystems biodiversity soil is tackled regarding the ecosystems and in the land use and change in the land use and how is the land use and change and change how the land is used and next please and then we have we look at strategy 218 the zero pollution ambition for a toxic free environment next the prevent pollution is also an issue which is related to soil and here better monitoring better reporting and means we have to prevent and we have to remedy soil pollution is also an issue for all Europe as I said before and finally the commission the top zero pollution action plan for air water and soil so that means many things for your audience that means the green plan is what we are looking now at in Europe many things for your audience thank you so much Bern very comprehensive from the important aspects that we learned from Europe and now I would like to call our next speaker from the region let's make sure here I have the right name Rosalina Gonzalez from Latin America in the Caribbean Universidad de la Sal in Colombia doctora Rosalina muy buenos días a todos muchas gracias por esta invitación por esta invitación tan importante voy a hablarles acerca del estado de la contaminación del suelo en América Latina y el Caribe en ese sentido quiero comentarles que los principales direccionadores de la contaminación del suelo son la agricultura, la minería la extracción transport y procesamiento de petróleo y aquello que tiene que ver con el manejo y en adecuado residuos sólidos y agua residuales municipales en cuanto a las prácticas agrícolas es importante mencionar que en América Latina el uso de pesticidas por área ha llegado pues a niveles que van entre 2.27 y 5.37 kilogramos por hectárea y con gran preocupación observamos como en el uso mundial de y pesticidas en Colombia hay tres países entre ellos Brasil, Argentina y Colombia dentro del top ten de así como también la utilización de fertilizantes ha llegado a valores que están del orden de 140 kilogramos por hectáreaable y el uso de materiales de residuos de animales utilizados también en suelos entonces están generando un impacto, cuál es la situación más preocupante y es que no se ha analizado primero ese impacto que ocasiona sobre las características físico químicas y biológicas sobre suelo y es un gran área de estudio para investigar y para determinar exactamente qué es lo que está ocasionando por otro lado, la minería y la industria de petróleo es un factor fuerte de contaminación de suelo en América Latina y el Caribe y es así como en los países de la región se observa bastante y con gran preocupación también algo que se ha observado es la minería ilegal que en este sentido implica el uso de una serie de materiales que aún no regulados están utilizando en el suelo en cuanto al tema del transporte de la extracción de petróleo lo están utilizando pero desafortunadamente situaciones como el hurto hidrocalvoros y aún como situaciones de tipo terrorista donde voladuras en los soleductos donde situaciones de hurto generan mucha contaminación debido a un continuo lexiviado estos materiales a través del suelo y obligan a una serie de medidas de remediación y legislación en este sentido también es destacar que nosotros al tener alrededor de 7.5 millones de barriles por día que están saliendo de nuestra región implica esto pues que debemos trabajar en este tema también de una manera mucho más fuerte el otro tema es el manejo de residuos sólidos y el vertimiento que se está haciendo sobre el suelo de aguas residuales se proyecta que para 2050 América Latina estará generando 670.000 toneladas por día residuos sólidos un gran porcentaje de lugares donde la disposición se hace en botaderos o basurales a cielo abierto que esto implica realmente un gran impacto sobre el suelo y que es uno de los grandes retos que tiene la región para trabajar allí desafortunadamente sólo para 2017 el 31% de la población contaba con una gestión del tema sanitario adecuado pero todavía hay alrededor de un 20% donde vemos temas como defecación al aire libre o servicios de saneamiento sin mejoras o limitado que implica un impacto directo al recurso en ese sentido y la situación que tiene que ver con vertimientos de aguas residuales ya sea tratadas o no tratadas sobre el suelo donde se observa que solamente 60% de la población está conectada a sistemas de tratamiento de aguas residual y el 30-40% de ese volumen es tratado entonces el resto que está pasando con ese resto de material cómo está llegando y cómo está haciendo esa relación entre suelo, características físico químicas y biológicas entonces hace mucha falta en ese sentido el estudio en la región como tal ¿Cuáles observan como principales contaminantes? en materia de sustancias orgánicas pesticidas, hirocarburos, sustancias farmacéuticas, medicamentos y productos de belleza y sustancias polimérica sintéticas en cuanto a metales se observa el plomo, el cadno, el mercurio y otros contaminantes emergentes y plásticos y microplásticos sin embargo hay un problema que es mucho más de fondo y ya nuestros compañeros lo han mencionado y que tiene que ver con la legislación en materia de la región hay marcos ambientales globales y regulaciones que son asociadas un ejemplo el tema de salud pública, el tema de residuos sólidos pero solamente encontramos unos muy pocos países entre ellos México, Costa Rica, Honduras, Perú, Argentina, Ecuador y Brasil con normativa específica en contaminación de suelos que significa que el resto no lo tiene entonces al no tenerlo, al no tener aquellos valores límite, al no tener aquella información pues se siguen presentando estas situaciones que nosotros observamos sabemos que la contaminación el conocimiento de la contaminación de suelo en esas etapas iniciales en la América Latina los países lo entienden y empiezan a trabajar en ese sentido algunos problemas de salud pública asociados con contaminación de suelo están siendo documentados pero al no tener información de base pues todavía no se sabe y eso lo menciono muy bien Natalia en su exposición también observamos que hay unas situaciones que el avance en conocimiento en la mayoría de estos países se hacen al nivel nacional y se derivan de proyectos financiados internacionales como la FAO en este sentido que ocurre falta todavía un compromiso mucho más fuerte en promover proyectos locales en este campo irregionales con el fin de tender realmente a un ejercicio y una solución a este problema porque como muy bien se mencionó donde suelo no se proteja donde suelo no deje de contaminarse estamos expuestos a una extinción como especie entonces hay que tener mucho cuidado en este sentido por eso es importante establecer aquellos valores límite regionales globales para diferentes temas de contaminantes de suelo límites para sustancias químicas específicas monitoreo permanente y monitoreo utilizando tecnología en ese sentido que sea muy rápida que podamos verlo en tiempo real y generar indicadores internacionales para científicos, para generadores de política pública que realmente puedan combatir la polución y que esos vacíos de información sean llenados allí necesitamos en la región el apoyo en temas de información, tecnología inversión en maquinaria y en equipos y tecnología para remediar la contaminación del suelo en América Latina del Caribe queremos hacerlo, estamos dispuestos y pues este era un mensaje que quería darles con el fin de poder trabajar juntos en este sentido nuevamente muchísimas gracias muchas gracias Rosalina excelente presentación, déjame recordar a los participantes que todas las presentaciones los documentos del vídeo estará disponible online en este sitio que nuestros colegas nos va a hacer llegar por el chat let me invite now our dear Talal Darwish from remote sensing center in Lebanon to give us the status of soil pollution nearest in North Africa Doctor Darwish, dear Talal you have the floor, I can't see you is there a problem with the connection with the law okay, do you hear me now? I hear you, I can't see you good afternoon you're welcome now you see me five minutes, five minutes, okay yeah, you see me now okay to classify the source of contaminant and then in addition we used a criteria like persistence and availability of these contaminant and the results based on the review of published literature from the nana countries revealed slight or minor to moderate risk from agricultural livestock production increasing risk from mining and industry but energy production transport, waste management and dust stones represent a moderate measure source of contamination in the area using the faust stack data on pesticide use in the nana countries revealed extreme excess of pesticide application to soil in Palestine, Lebanon Jordan and some other countries that are having excess amount but the most used or treated or studied hazard in the nana region is the trace element and as you can see here in the table these trace elements are listed in decreasing orders values reported from Egypt, Iran, Iraq Palestine, Tunisia are warning and require intervention for remediation other countries presenting lower values need intervention to prevent further iteration of land quality we consulted the experts opinion from the nana region about the most used techniques for soil remediation the results showed that nanotechnology and remediation were the least used methods in the region data derived from published literature showed in Algeria good advance in soil reconstruction from degraded industrial west lands beside the good success of the use of microorganism to be degraded petroleum product incontaminated in addition in Saudi Arabia the success was retested the anaerobic digestion of organic fraction and pyrolysis of plastics for the management of solid waste and very well used is the synergy between plants and degrating and detoxifying bacteria beside in Syria a preliminary remediation of oil spales and remediation of trace element polluted soil was successfully tested in the soils of Dersur, Arakka, Kamishli and Idlib in general pollution from waste is a common problem in the nana region notably in urbanized area fortunately high rate of these countries have ratified the basal soil home but unfortunately most nana countries still lack specific laws on soil pollution solving the issues of land degradation and soil degradation in the nana region is still within the national action program focusing mainly on soil salinity erosion and other soil degradation processes sure we need technical assessment surveys on soil pollution and soil remediation but these are mainly oriented towards laboratory assays, pile of size and peer reviewed journals we need more link between science and policy and field the management of polluted soils requires a functional updated soil information system to enable land quality permanent monitoring assessment and monitoring to conclude studies on the hazard from pollution in nana countries focus mainly on trace elements assessment of the status of soil pollution with other contaminants like pesticides, radionuclides microplastics or nanoplastic is still at an early stage radionuclide pollution was reported only in five countries of the nana region the assessment and monitoring of soil pollution continues to receive attention from academia and researchers but it has to rise to the level of regular national assessment and monitoring policies and programs thank you for your attention thank you to all, thank you particularly for being so sharp into the time, nice presentation which we will be happy to share and you will notice that we are learning here that soil pollution is a global problem from different regions let's look at the North American case I invite Dr. Jeffrey Simory from University of Wisconsin Jeffrey are you here with us? Thank you the status of soil pollution in North America can be summed up by the statement big countries plus big economies equal big soil pollution problems in the United States one third of the population lives within five kilometers of a contaminated soil brownfield site and in the state of Colorado there are 23,000 abandoned mines similarly in Canada there are 23,000 federally abandoned mines however no single information source tracks polluted land on a national scale in either country both countries do realize this is a significant data gap that impedes soil remediation where we are making progress is in mapping geogenic sources of soil pollution the United States geologic survey has developed a mineral atlas which shows background soil levels throughout the continental right is soil arsenic and they have many other elements as well this information is really important in developing soil remediation plans so scarce resources are allocated where they will have the greatest impact Canada is developing similar data but on a provincial scale agriculture the agriculture industry is an important source of soil pollution in North America both countries have large amounts of land devoted to crop production fertilizer usage has increased since 1960 and we know that soil bound fertilizer runoff leads to water quality impairment pesticide usage on the other hand peaked in 1981 and has fallen since then which is good for soil this is largely due to the use of genetically modified crops which require fewer pesticides we have found that improved farm management practices have been shown to positively impact soil pollution and water pollution at a relatively low cost even small improvements and practices can yield large results due to the amount of land affected one new area of high concern is with the hundreds of unique polyfloral alcohol substances or PFAS found in a wide range of consumer commercial and industrial products soil pollution by PFAS has impacted the drinking water for over 110 million people in almost every state in the US soil analytical methods for these compounds are complicated and many don't yet exist making soil screening standards hard to develop in 2019 Canada developed soil standards for a few PFAS compounds and the United States Environmental Protection Agency is devoting significant energy to develop methods and regulatory guidance it is estimated that PFAS cleanup costs will exceed 10 billion dollars for natural resources alone not including personal health damage costs PFAS will be a big problem for decades to come fortunately the United States and Canada have a lengthy and productive environmental partnership our 9,000 kilometer border of diverse geography and ecosystems requires close cooperation at all governmental levels the two federal governments have over 40 agreements and the states and provinces over 100 additional agreements which help provide a uniform framework for managing soil pollution now much of the news about soil pollution I'd like to share a little bit of good news as someone who researches soil health soil lead health impacts I find it encouraging that over the past 40 years the percentage of US children whose blood lead levels exceeded the 10 microgram per deciliter poisoning standard decreased from 88 to less than 1% reducing soil lead contamination and exposure to contaminated soil has played an important role in this reduction and proves that concentrated effort to address soil pollution and have concrete health impacts thank you thank you so much, Jeffrey excellent presentation and encouraging above all as the problem is big but looks like the solutions are there there are solutions, thank you indeed to cover the world we are missing sub-Saharan Africa so I'm very pleased to invite Marinee Blau from South Africa she works in the Terrafrica program Marinee, can I see you there? yes, can you hear me? you are most welcome we can hear you well, as far as you are for 5 minutes thank you ok, great, thank you warm greetings to everybody from the Gulf of Africa ok, so the region that I looked at has 48 countries and it's divided in 5 different sub-regions based on the geographical position I think the one characteristic that will summarise a lot of the contamination or the risk that's all contamination is the rapid population growth that the region has seen it went from 227 million in 1960 to 1.8 billion in 2018 and a recent launch and report in October last year said that some of the countries are predicted to have a doubling or tripling or even a slight fold increase in population numbers until 21,000 apart from that there is the scary thing that the region's disease burden has always come from infectious diseases but the risk of non-communicable diseases are growing especially cancer and respiratory related diseases and some of the cosenogens identified already has been identified as main soil contaminants in the region to date no large-scale assessment of regional soil pollution has been done small areas research based reports but no report that shows extensive areas the size of pollution plumes and the mixture of contaminants that are present so the work that was done was based largely on literature reviews of academic reports programs also work that's been done by NGOs on addressing soil pollution and from all this data mining is regarded as the most significant source of soil pollution in the region followed by waste management industrial activities agriculture and oil extraction looking at the main contaminants in the region trace elements by 4 has been mentioned in research as the biggest contaminant this is followed by hydrocarbon and polychlorinated bifin oils I just want to emphasize that just because trace elements reflect so high and mining as the main industry doesn't mean these other pollutants doesn't exist in the region it's just that the research is very limited on this so just looking at the main culprit according to the research minerals Africa as the largest mineral industry in the world and we're blessed with so many resources ranging from gold, diamonds cobalt copper most of these which are extracted and exported to other regions in the world the mining industry in Africa can be divided into two different sectors there's the large scale mines operated mining companies where the entire process can lead to soil contamination from the dust fallout coming from tailings facilities the processing of ore at smelters the waste storage facilities as well as the dust suppression on all roads where they use other compounds in the water to try and suppress the dust there's also the issue of acid mine drainage especially associated with gold mining activities that lower soil pH and increase the risk of waste trace element mobility then the small and artisanal mining which is a contributed to a large part of 23 at least of the regional countries economies the two main soil contaminants identified here for the extraction of gold is mercury and cyanide is also now being used in some countries such as the United Republic of Tanzania Zimbabwe and Burkina Faso following the toxic sites investigation program by which sites can be registered as contaminated mercury has already been registered for 75 sites in sub-Saharan Africa and it's been estimated that it might affect the health of 2.4 million people there's also reports on oil spills the most reports comes from Nigeria where more than 4000 oil spills have been reported since 1960 or between 1960 and 2010 and then Angola has also started to report some reports on oil spills especially for the provinces of Kabinda and Zaire since 2009 then looking at another significant contributed to soil pollution which I think is a growing risk and that is the shift in waste as a pollution a source of soil pollution as a result of urbanization in the region so massive urbanization trained from 567 million people in 2015 to 950 million people predicted to live in urban areas in 2050 and this is accompanied by a massive increase in solid waste from what was 81 million tons to predicted 244 million tons in 2025 now the current recycling rate of municipal solid waste in the region is 4% most of the waste ends up on open waste sites where it's been without prior sorting the different papers show the mixtures of waste including medical waste agricultural waste as well as electronic waste which is becoming a larger site now where it is directly recycled by ear waste recyclers usually by means of open burning soil at and around these waste sites have been analyzed for contaminants and it's found that there's trace elements such as cobalt copper, lead mercury nickel vanadium as well as persistent organic pollutants including PCBs and chlorinated and brominated dioxin like compounds and then after I've mentioned the population increase, the massive trend of urbanization the traditional land use zoning as we know it of letting people settle in residential areas to prevent them from direct exposure to soil contamination is not happening in these countries as people rush to the cities to find jobs or opportunities working on mines and in industrial areas they settle very closely to these areas sometimes between the activities and this increases the human interests associated by the soil contamination then looking at the steps that's already been done to address soil pollution in the region as mentioned by earlier speakers there's international conventions while some countries have embraced all of these or signed them there was a lesser adoption of the Minamata convention to prevent mercury emissions perhaps because some countries know that mercury is used for the extraction of gold by a decimal minus and that it contributes a large part of the economies the region has also taken action in 1991 there was after the import of hazardous waste onto African land in the 1980s and at the end of 1990 the region said that they want to prevent any hazardous waste from entering the region and set up the Bamako convention there was it was assigned but not widely adopted and then in a nudge to promote action again the region said that there will be the liberal declaration basically nudging countries to say you have a problem with hazardous waste imposed you should look at this from the regional conventions national legislation filtered into 45 out of the 48 countries that address certain aspects of soil pollution it's basically industry related issues of soil pollution might be addressed in mining legislation or environmental framework legislation pesticides are also addressed in some countries agricultural legislation however there's only three countries in the region that have a definite set of reference values against which soil samples contaminant levels can be measured these countries are Burkina Faso South Africa and the United Republic of Tanzania and when comparing these values to each other differences in that comparing it to international values such as the Canadian values there's a massive difference in what is tolerated in African countries and that which is tolerated in Canada and then looking at legislation specifically focused on soil prevention and management only two pieces of legislation were found and that is in Namibia and Burundi so then addressing soil pollution I'm afraid you have to round up sorry to interrupt because you're running against out of time sorry you can round up quickly okay that's fine so a lot of work has been done by some academic institutions also both on detection as well as remediation however there is a big need to collaborate the information and the work that's been done by different organizations to form a visual picture of what it looks like in the region also to identify the massive information gaps there's a need for soil specifically legislation to address soil contamination and then also to focus on large scale communication and education efforts thank you thank you so much and apologies for interrupting but our agreement with the system and interpreters was to run from 12 30 to 2 30 p.m. which is 2 30 p.m. now in Rome that we are in a wide range of time that's 8 30 in La Paz it's 10 30 in Australia Newcastle Australia where Navi is there 10 30 p.m. thank you so much for joining with us but we have a problem of time and before we advance for the next presentation I would like to agree with you that we all we're I'm learning so much I hope that you are learning as much as I am for me it's like drinking from the fireman who's you see this amount of information that is arriving to us on how to address it and I would like to to thank the colleagues from the seven regions that present to us the status and the regions and it would be a pity if we don't complete with the two presentations that are missing for us to address concrete examples of remediation of soil pollution so if you buried us for another 15 minutes and I'd like to extend special thank you for the interpreters interpretation is continuing for the next 15 minutes I would just like to ask both Dr. Peters and Dr. de Frey to to be as concise as possible for us to complete on time and I would like to invite them to go to the next session Mr. Bavo Peters from the European Commissions on the EU action plan towards zero pollution for air and water and soil you have the floor Bavo are you there with us Isabel if you can spot Bavo on the screen Yeah Eduardo it seems that Bavo have problems with connections because he was here before but he's not now so maybe we can move with the next speaker Thank you, thank you very much so why don't we do this while Bavo reconnects let's go for Johan de Frey chair of the Nicole Network to ask what Nicole's evolution is a multi stakeholder network industrial soil contamination Johan Good afternoon or good morning or good evening wherever you are thank you for introducing me I'll speak as concise as I can to talk a little bit about our network's evolution as a multi stakeholder network tackling industrial soil pollution so maybe start with briefly what is Nicole it's a network of three types of members academia so we have different universities as members industry, mostly multi nationals and then consultants who work in the fields of contaminated land and groundwater and so it's a professional network of those individuals that work in the contaminated land space typically what we do we try to exchange knowledge and skills and experience and how you deal with contaminated land or contaminated industrial land more specifically in that respect we were also invited to contribute to the global assessment of soil pollution report which we were very honored to be asked to do that we have working groups that tackle particular topics such as mercury or asbestos in soil and so forth as you would imagine and we try to convene twice a year these days obviously mostly virtually to exchange and have our individuals meet each other I think it's or the topic at hand here for us was to share a little bit how we from our inception in 1996 evolved over the years in terms of focus and initially as is or was the case in a lot of jurisdictions we focus primarily on the regulatory compliance making sure that we clean up against given standards and concentrations that you need to achieve obviously based on science and factual information but we rapidly saw and again this is an evolution that you see in other regions as well is that it is very hard to clean up land up to pristine original conditions so the concept of risk based remediation came to the fore and now I have one slide on to dwell on it a little bit we've moved on from there to sustainable remediation and including in fact in remedial approach the concept of sustainability and these days were even going a step further where we introduced the concept of land stewardship which is a fairly new concept it's not an easy concept and again I'll dwell briefly on it so risk based remediation it's been mentioned by some of the previous speakers it's really looking at three components having the source of pollution the pathway which could be airborne, could be dust, could be through water transportation and ultimately it reaches a receptor who could be a human receptor a protected area could be groundwater that is used for drinking water purposes so that is defined by the local circumstances and in essence it really means that to acknowledge that total removal as I said of pollution is often not possible physically not possible often there's also a financial component to it that often it is physically because of the age and the distribution the depth is just impossible the risk based remediation is these days the core approach to handling pollution of an industrial site we've moved on from there as I mentioned and we've introduced sustainability concepts it's not widely applied but there are some good examples of organizations that have applied it or are applying it where you as most of you know you not only look at the environmental aspect or the technical solution but you include social and economic factors and really the crux of sustainable remediation revolves around how you communicate with relevant stakeholders so not only the owner operator and the regulator if you like but also tenants, neighbors residential areas in the neighborhood and so forth and you bring them all into the conversation and discuss up front how you will tackle remediation and you need to do it up front to make sure that you get buy in you get everybody's concerns on the table and only then will you decide how you remediate and what your technical solution we have a whole that we've developed I invite you to go to our website the link is in one of the previous slides I won't dwell on it but it describes in detail how you incorporate sustainability thinking in a remedial approach the London Olympics in 2012 were actually the most impressive example of applying sustainability to clean up and redevelopment of land I won't dwell on it if you google it there are numerous articles and publications that explain it but it was quite an impressive an early demonstration of if you said it as an ambition it's actually achievable it was very impressive as an outcome and mind you the Olympic park these days is not a white elephant it is still being used a lot of the buildings that were supposedly recyclable and demolishable if that's an English word are still in use so all of the concept of circularity was introduced almost as a hindsight in reusing the Olympic site last slide current and future developments of the Nicole network so I mentioned last stewardship we have a publication in 2019 where we explain the concept and it really is introducing the idea of circularity in managing land and valuing land and soil if you like for their intrinsic values that they bring we try to apply to the industrial land which is not easy in particular it's difficult when you have an industrial occupation spanning several decades with all the related pollution that goes with it but we do believe that with creativity and when you do need to hand it over and you've been a good steward of your land that there are ways of renewing the land and making it useful for a next purpose whatever that might be we're also looking at liability transfer and environmental liability transfer of contaminated land in Europe and how that works what different jurisdictions provide or don't provide often it's very difficult to transfer a liability obviously the pollution the polluter base principle applies and so handing over liability is a difficult and very tricky concept but we thought it would be useful to look at experiences and on how it's possible or not possible and how it's been handled in different countries in Europe and then last two points given that we are 25 years old we are also thinking about what could be the next 25 years what new can we bring to Europe and the world if you like and we're looking at establishing a foundation that actually harnesses the skills of the collective membership that we have and if you look at the environmental world we're seeing in our own network and elsewhere that the first full time 40 or 50 years of full time practicing of environmental solutions that first generation is retiring but is still very active and obviously has an enormous amount of experience and skills that they can reuse and they are willing to reuse so again it's something we're exploring and we're making good headway there and then finally I'm happy to share that we also have some spin-offs from members that are active in those regions in Latin America and Africa and so we have a growing interaction with those regions in terms of sharing experience, skill sets and what have you and with that Mr. Chairman I will conclude. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Johan even in the chat people are already asking for your email so I can see there nansunicol.org and strong interest congratulations for the good work. Let's see if Babo connected, Babo are you there? I'm here. Good so if you can shorten up your presentation as we are over time now. Yeah I will try thank you Eduardo good afternoon everybody I would like to bring the zero pollution action plan for air, water and soil to your attention today this plan was launched three weeks ago by the European Commission and it's an important building block of the European Green Deal as you might know the Green Deal is our strategy to make the EU more sustainable and climate neutral now why do we need to act it's already been set several times our human health is closely connected to the health of our planet currently in the EU one in eight deaths is linked to pollution and then especially air pollution 90% of these deaths are due to chronic diseases of which cancer is the most frequent one when it comes to the health of our planet a toxic free environment is crucial to protect our biodiversity and ecosystems pollution is one of the five main drivers of biodiversity loss and it's also closely linked to climate change and our hunger for resources pollution is expected to worsen until 2050 unless we manage to turn the trend so here you see an overview of the structure of the Green Deal and how the action plan fits in the zero pollution action plan goes hand in hand with the EU goals for climate neutrality, sustainable food biodiversity mobility and resource efficiency the action plan aims to implement the Green Deal vision for a zero pollution ambition for a toxic free environment and this by 2050 now what does this mean the zero pollution ambition does not mean we intend to reduce pollution to an absolute zero this would not be feasible and realistic it's rather an objective to reduce pollution by 2050 to levels which are no longer harmful for human health and for our environment and in that way to respect the boundaries of our planet the action plan is broad and contextual and it's an integrated strategy such an approach is new but also very necessary many different sectors emit thousands of pollutants and chemicals and eventually these end up in our environment in our air, water and soil so a holistic perspective is absolutely necessary to address the complex chain of pollution from the source to the end of the pipe and therefore the plan brings together measures from different policy domains and you see them here agriculture, transport, energy, industry etc the plan puts also forward a pollution hierarchy so the upside down pyramid that you see here contamination should be prevented as much as possible at the source because prevention is the most efficient cost efficient way to solve the pollution problem but sometimes pollution cannot be avoided and then emissions should be minimized and controlled as much as possible for example through environmental permits and only if all of this has failed remediation could be the solution of lost resort now let's have a look at some of the actions that relate to soil in the action plan before the end of this year the commission will come forward with a proposal and an impact assessment for a new law on nature restoration and this means legal obligations for member states to restore degraded ecosystems and since we consider soils as an ecosystem in their own right this law should also cover the restoration of degraded soils and certainly the most carbon rich soils the proposal will also contain a mechanism to map, assess and achieve good condition of ecosystems but all of this is still working progress and under discussion the EU already has rules for the treatment of wastewater and the application of sewage sludge on agricultural land we will evaluate these policies and see if they are still fit for purpose and if needed these directives will be revised and adapted to the new Green Deal ambition we will also evaluate the environmental liability directive and that's a piece of legislation that defines who is liable in case of environmental damage and pollution this is very important to make sure that the polluter base principle is properly applied also for soil contamination the commission will also come with a proposal to change the rules and the scope of the industrial emissions directive in the EU certain industrial activities require environmental permits they have to apply the best available techniques such operators also have to do a baseline report or a soil investigation when they start and their activity and if they cause pollution well then they will have to remediate that contamination the commission will also review the waste loss this of course has an impact on soil quality because improper waste management is an important of soil pollution as we already heard a couple of times today then the non-legislative actions still this year the commission will come forward with a new soil strategy such a strategy is not a law and is in that sense similar to the zero pollution action plan the the nominator between the soil strategy and the zero pollution action plan is soil pollution but the soil strategy will also address all other soil threats such as erosion organic matter decline etc the commission also committed to reduce nutrient losses with 50% and fertilizer was used with 20% by 2030 and this compared to 2015 and to achieve these targets the commission will propose or adopt an integrated nutrient management action plan there's also an action on excavated soils some countries in the EU already have a system in place to check and track the quality of excavated soil this is important to separate the clean soil from the contaminated soil and to prevent that the excavated soil can cause secondary contamination somewhere else we will look at the good examples that are available and provide guidelines to track the quality and the transport of excavated soils for example through a soil passport the EU will also establish please wrap up as we are okay so we will also develop a list for soil contaminants contaminants of very high concern we will also include additional pollution parameters in our Lucas soil survey and we have a research program on soil specifically dedicated to soil including on soil pollution so if you want to read more and have a complete overview you can click on this link and read the full plan it's available in all languages of the EU thank you very much thank you so much and I think we had a lot with all the presentations that we had today I was telling you that I learned a lot but my colleagues of the global soil partnership and the UNEP that are participating here with us and I recognize Abdel Cader's strong work with Natalia organizing the event and the preparation of the report they want to know if we really learn it so they want to launch a quiz there was some debate what a quiz is what the prize is let's see what it is Isabel are you ready to launch the first question for the quiz we will all be able to participate online you just have to click on the answer that will come on your screen with the questions that will come on your screen so Isabel Verbeck from the partnerships will help us with the global assessment of soil pollution quiz the floor is yours many thanks Eduardo first how to access the quiz so you can either click on the link my colleague is right now posting on the chat or search for menti.com and insert the code shown on the screen okay I suggest you use your smartphone so you can see the letter board that will be shown on this screen so let's start now and assess whether you've been following the keynote presentation and how much you've learned we will start now with a warm-up question why all participants are connecting so this question is not part of the quiz but is a question addressed to all of you participants from so many countries so is soil pollution an issue in your country okay I think there is no doubt members are speaking by themselves and this is a real issue so we will now start our quiz with the first question please put in your first name and last name so we know who the winners are and be ready to answer quickly as the first 10 winner will receive the soil kit composed of shopper, gadgets and the global assessment of soil pollution summary for policy maker already let's go with question one what percentage of the world soils is affected by pollution a. about 32% of global soils are polluted b. only industrial soils are polluted c. they are major knowledge gaps and we do not know in detail the extent and degree of pollution affecting the world soils and d. we are only aware of 16% of polluted soils okay so the correct answer is c. indeed there is still a lot to learn about this growing thread the report is an important milestone but there are still major knowledge gaps on the extent and degree of soil pollution let's continue now to the second question soil pollution affects a. soil health b. hair and water quality c. human health d. all of the above a few more seconds okay and then the right answer is d. soil pollution affects the food we eat the water we drink and the health of all organisms on the planet including humans alright let's go now to the third question what is the main source of soil pollution as identified in the report that was just launched a. industrial activities and mining b. unsustainable agriculture c. geogenic source d. war and military activities e. improper waste management e. improper waste management a few more seconds to go okay indeed most of you are right industrial activities and mining is the right answer and that was illustrated in the report and in the presentation of my colleague Natalia let's move now to the final question which is what are the priority actions in the fight against soil pollution a. measures starting with education and awareness raising b. strict legislation at national level c. legislative and intervention frameworks harmonize at international level d. strengthening cooperation at all levels from basic research to the exchange of experience and technology and e all of the above okay very good indeed the right answer is e. communication and cooperation among a right range of actors need to be reinforced for our fight against soil pollution okay it's now time to see who the winner how the winners here they are so very well done congratulations to all of you please send me a private message now on the chat with your email so we can ship your price I hope you enjoy you learn a lot with a quiz with to the webinar congratulations again and back to you Eduardo thank you Isabella thank you colleagues I think it was interesting and fun everybody has a smile on the face now because I failed one I'm not telling you which one but it was it was a nice exercise colleagues it was an honor as director of the office of climate change by diversity environment to be invited to moderate this webinar and be with you during this session the closure remarks we are very pleased to have here very humbled to have the deputy director general of the food and agriculture organization of the United Nations throughout the webinar I was very patient as much as all of you and our interpreters about this I think it's a great pleasure to have you here I am poor management time goes overboard Madame is here with us and she will make the closing remarks of our webinar Dr. it's a great pleasure to have you here and I will I am going to pass the floor Good morning good evening It's really my pleasure to greet you again. And I think my dad has already greeted you, but it's really my pleasure. I think I mute it. We can hear you, but we can't see you. This is your camera's off. No, this is the CFS48 session. I think you've got the wrong make. No, but I can't follow you. We can hear you, but we can't see you. Okay. Is your camera that... Okay, let me disconnect. Let me see. We can hear you well. But I don't know what is going on. Murphy's Law, it always strikes in the meetings. We can hear it perfectly, man. It's... We can also see you. Yes, but this is the link to the 48th session of the CFS. Just carry on. Some can see you, some can hear you, and some can see you and hear you. We are out of time. Maybe, but it's very strange because I can't see you walk. It's only our camera that's not operating. What you're all doing is perfect. Okay, give me just a moment. Or I move without the camera. Well, some can see you very well. I can see you very well. Ana Maria, can you come here? I can see you clearly too. You were on the CFS. I don't know what is... My camera is on the CFS. Yeah. I think you're in the link, in the CFS link. Now, but how can you hear me? We can hear you. We can hear you perfectly. Every meeting is a surprise. I mean, how a person... We can hear you perfectly well. Please. Where do you... Even in Australia. I'm here. No, sorry. No, and you open these. Look, you open this one. No, because they can hear me. Okay. Ana Maria, where's the CFS? Yeah, Silvia, let's close it. No, close it. Bear with me because Madam Semedo did the effort to aid the whole session to stay with us. She would like to greet us before we close. And there is this connection problem. So this is gonna come up. I wish we had more queries to make because it was really fun to go to the questions. And I would like to thank the organizers and interpreters for being with us beyond the time and making sure that we could go throughout the webinar. It's impressive to see that this new reality brought us to this condition that with relatively low costs, we can keep Ravi awake late hours in Australia. And you can wake up the Vice President of Bolivia at 6 a.m. in La Paz. And we are all together at the same time, thanks to the technology that still evolving, right? We are still learning how to use it. But I have a son who works on IT and he tells me that if there is something that you can't do with your phone, it's gonna disappear in the future. So you have to be able to communicate and connect all the time. Let me see if we can get Madam Semedo back. There she is, connecting now with video and audio. Madam, we are very pleased to have you back. You can activate your microphone now. We have your image, but we don't have your mic. It's muted. Okay. Now it's full. The floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you so much. I don't know what happened, but okay. It was a good way to close the meeting. I was saying that it's really my pleasure to greet you again at the close of this remarkable event. I stayed here for the full time. And I think not only Eduardo, but I also learned a lot and it has been fantastic, the presentations. Today, we anticipated the celebration of the World Environment Day. And we also contribute to the launch of the Decade of Ecosystem Restoration. Both urgent calls to protect our planet. And I would like to evoke the vice president, what he reminded us. We need to reconnect with nature, with Pachamama. We need a healthy living, with healthy soils, healthy life and healthy people. Dear participants, as stated in the resolution establishing the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, we need to prevent, help and reverse the degradation of ecosystems worldwide. As the graded ecosystem affect 40% of the world's population, aggravating poverty and food insecurity. This new report provides undeniable evidence that protecting our soils from degradation and reducing soil pollution is more essential than ever. And it has been already said that this event is a concrete results of the close collaboration between FAO, the Global Soil Partnership, Intergovernment Technical Panel on Soils and UNEP. And it was only possible thanks to the strong engagement of our members to promote sustainable soil management. And I would like to commend all the contributors to the report. It has said that it took two years to prepare the report. But also thank particularly the partners who financial support the Global Soil Partnership. The report brings to mind the collective work done in the context of the One Health approach on the interlinkages between healthy people, healthy animals, healthy plants and healthy environment. And only by joining force can we tackle problems and scale up solutions. A call for more action was clear from the principles of UNEP and FAO. The report sets out a clear feature path for the global communities towards addressing soil pollution for a zero pollution world. And the regional presentation revealed that soil pollution is a global problem. Indeed with some specificities. Our calling from WHO remind us that everybody is affected by pollution starting from our food. And let me recall the message from Inga. We need to stop soil pollution. We need to reverse the damage. We need stronger enforcement. And we need to make sure that science travels. And she called our attention that more than politicians, the report needs to reach the smallholder farmers. But we also need to invest in advocacy and awareness raising so that soil pollution is no longer a hidden reality. We are fully committed to implement the report's recommendation but need to do so together. We need healthy soils for a healthy life. You can count on FAO's Global Soil Partnership to facilitate the implementation of the zero soil pollution agenda. I would like to thank the organizers and Eduardo Mansour for facilitating the event. Let's all join forces and be the solution to soil pollution. I would like to conclude by using you all a happy environment day to reimagine, recreate and restore ecosystems. Thank you again for your enthusiastic participation and commitment and I wish you a happy environment day tomorrow. Thank you, Eduardo, over to you. Thank you, madam. I think you deserve a round of applause. Virtually welcome to the stage. And also for our speakers, our audience, our interpreters and the organizers for the authors of the report. Our congratulations. The webinar is over but all the information is on the website. The link has been provided to be provided again in the chat for you to make sure that you access and let's continue this dialogue. Once again, thank you very much for every single one of you. On behalf of FAO and UNEP, we thank you for participating and we will issue a wonderful world environment day in a nice weekend ahead. All the best, everyone. All the best. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Eduardo, great championship. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you very much. For the other part, we have you. Natalia Luisistas. Thank you. Thank you to everybody. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Saludos, greetings to Natalia Luisistas. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for the great job and collaboration. Wonderful example of collaboration between two UN sisters. Excellent. Thank you. Yes, we have to be one UN, right? Exactly. Thanks, Eduardo. Have a good weekend, everybody. Thank you to the colleagues of Global Service Partnership. Great job. Bye-bye now. Bye-bye. Ravi, thanks for being awake until now. That's it, 11 p.m. there. Hi, it's 11 p.m. now. It's a great launch and you're a fantastic general, of course, Natalia, for leadership. Thanks so much. Hopefully, see you. Também bom dia, pros colegas que estão no Brasil. Eu ouvi muitos meus colegas que eu sou brasileiro. So, let me grab the chance to greet my fellow citizens over there. Muchas gracias a los de Latinoamérica que estuvieron con nosotros. Merci a todos. Alec, coleg, dafric, de rock. Ay, ten plazito. Muchas gracias. Let's be the solution to soil pollution. The meeting is over, colleagues.