 So again, thank you to everyone for being here with us today. It is a pleasure. I with these words, open the launch event of the global so the international network of self pollution of the global self partnership of FL. And without further ado, I would like to start with the opening of the meeting. Unfortunately, I don't see yet. Our director, Mr. Lily, Mr. Lee friendly. Maybe he's having some issues to connect to the event. Okay, but I see we have our deputy director Sasha Koshima that has you in us. So maybe Sasha, you can take the floor. And give some words for the opening remarks of this international network of self pollution on behalf of living. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen and distinguished guests. It's a pleasure for me to be here and to welcome you to the launch of the international network on soil pollution. This is a very important aspect of our work globally in FAO as one health, which is a cross cutting subject matter across the board across all the departments and divisions. So this is very exciting time for us to have a network to, you know, practitioners to look into the soil pollution which is affecting so many countries and so many areas and regions from from various on farm management issues to some of the diffuse pollution issues. So I look forward to having all of you in providing the framework and also the guidelines to to FAO and moving this particular network forward. Without much ado, I'd like to hand it back to the moderator and to continue with today's program. Thank you. Thank you very much Sasha for your nice words for the opening. And now I would like to welcome our next speaker, the director of the environment climate change and health division of the World Health Organization, Dr. Maria Neda. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Dear colleagues from FAO. Thank you very much for organizing it and for this kind invitation. Before starting, let me wish you all a very happy Earth Day. Actually, I don't know whether we can say happy Earth Day, or just to put in a question, because I'm not sure we are treating the earth the way she or he deserve. I don't accept the fact that as human beings and because of our human activities, our legacy as a society is pollution, soil pollution, air pollution, water pollution, this is totally unacceptable. I'm sure that you will agree with me that we change we need to change this legacy. And starting with the launch of this international network on soil pollution. I think it's a very good initiative in this sense. I refuse as a human being as a citizen as a mother to leave behind us as a legacy, a total pollution of the air we breathe the food we eat the water we drink this is absolutely unacceptable and less hope that today at your meeting coinciding with the Earth Day, we will put already some important pillar to start to move on something different. Colleagues my comments as the representative of the World Health Organization is only one soil pollution is so much link or soil is very much linked to human health. Normally we always talk about the negative impact that polluted soil will have on human health because of the overuse of pesticides synthetic fertilizers, the potential contamination of the fresh water. But let me be positive today, let me concentrate on the positive aspects if we have a healthy soil. And this is so much linked to our the potential for a healthy nutrition for food security. Imagine that that will represent a very important contribution to human health. Therefore, my message is that put health as well on very strongly on your consideration for for promoting an international network for to avoid soil pollution. Let's join forces, all of us to say well pollution is bad is bad for the economy is bad for the society is by bad for for for human health. And I'm sure that all together we will pass this message and hopefully giving some hope as well for for for the generation we are supposed to protect for the planet we are supposed to protect and for for all of us ensuring human health in a different way. A few days ago it was the World Health Day and we dedicated that the theme was our planet our health so it cannot be more relevant to what you are discussing here today. So in the name of the health community, thank you for that and please be reassured that we will use as much as possible the health argument to support this. Thank you very much, Natalia over to you. Thank you very much. The tornado really appreciated your important remarks and to know that we have the support of the World Health Organization as well. Now I would like also to thank the director of the ecosystem division of the United Nations environment program. Ms Gardner, who wasn't able to attend due to career commitments, but has sent us her support for this initiative. And as all of you know, you know it's also a key partner for this network so thank you also to you know for supporting this initiative. And finally, for the for the final remark for the opening remarks, sorry, I want to give the floor to Mr. Joachim Dugennio from the digital environment of the European Commission, who will tell us more about the European Cerepollution Action Plan. So Mr. Joachim, now you have the floor. Thank you. Excellent. Hello everybody. Good to see you all. Thanks for the invitation. I'm delighted to be with you and I'm even more delighted that I'm able to speak on behalf of the European Commission and doing so after Maria Nayra because it makes my life much easier because I can only fully subscribe and support what she has said in general about pollution, and more specifically about the role that your network can play, and that the link to health, health, that how important it is. We are really thrilled to see that FAO with many partners, you've mentioned UNEP I think you've many, many people other people who are joining this network and then have made this possible today. That this is happening because it basically shows that we are not alone in the European Union about thinking about pollution in such a systemic and an important way that pollution has to be tackled. I think we have been working on this also on soil pollution for many, many years, but we really realize now that the time has come that we have to step change our actions and that we really have to make a difference. And that is why your initiative and your work will be absolutely essential and will be contributing to the ambition that we have set out under the European Green Deal and in particular under the European Action Plan for zero pollution for air, water and soil. Now let me start back from when the Green Deal was announced by my president, Mrs. von der Leyen, and she highlighted the importance that she wanted that our health, the health of our citizens and biodiversity are protected from pollution, and in doing so to set out a zero pollution ambition, which is a generational goal and it is a global goal as well as a local goal. I think there is a global dimension of pollution and there's a local dimension of pollution. And she really set out this this view and we were delighted also to to from the outset to make sure that we're working on pollution on air, water and soil together. And as you may know in the EU, soil has somehow been not has had that much prominence that our air and water policy have received. So we were delighted to see that we really now are trying to tackle this in an integrated way across the whole environmental cycle. And that we are that we are doing so with a long term vision, which is the second point that I wanted to point out. In the action plan that we've published nearly a year ago, and in analogy to what we have set out in terms of climate neutrality for 2050, we developed the vision, a vision of starting point something to aspire to for 2050 zero pollution vision and I just want to read that out to you. This vision says air, water and soil pollution is reduced to levels no longer considered harmful to health and natural ecosystems, and that respect the boundaries of our planet can cope with, thus creating a toxic free environment. This is a very bold and ambitious vision. And I'm not saying this is going to be easy. I'm not saying we have all the answers yet. But if we don't set ourselves long term ambitious goals, we will never be able to tackle these issues in the way they need to be addressed. And the good thing about the action plan that we set out with in the context of the Green Dealers that we don't do that in isolation, we do that together by joining forces and building on the actions and the work that we're doing to achieve climate neutrality. The actions we're taking to reduce biodiversity loss and which has set out in the biodiversity strategy, the drive towards a circular economy, the one health approach set out by the double H or to have a healthy, healthy lives for our citizens and children. I think we're really at the game changer in terms of policy making, which also requires everybody to join in. This is not an action that the European Commission or the EU can take on its own. It requires the brightest minds and hearts around the world to join that ambition to join that spirit and that vision and make a difference and your network is exactly doing that and that's why I'm so delighted to be part of this, of this launching event. I wish you all a success. And I think we all now, in addition to being Earth, we all now are subject to a situation where our hearts and minds are with people in Ukraine where things are happening we could not have even foreseen and this is day to day terrible, but you also will know from your experience that the level of pollution that is being created through this war will also be with us for many, many years and people will be affected even long time when this war is hopefully soon over. And this is something where soil pollution will come in where we really need to do this for everybody on the planet. And that's why your efforts and your initiative is so much welcome from our side. So I will stop here. I see their colleagues from our side also participating further to give you more details on what we have presented and what we're now working on in more detail in relation to soil. But I just wanted to say a few words of welcome and a few words of appreciation and encouragement to be as ambitious as possible. And we are there to really work together closely in new endeavors. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. Delgenio. It has been a very enlightening presentation. Indeed, I hope this network will really contribute at least from the soil part to achieve this global goal of zero pollution because it is something that the European Commission has proposed for its own territory, but it goes farther because pollution is a problem that affects all of us. It doesn't know any border. It doesn't respect any border and indeed everything that happens in one place in the world will affect the health of humans and the environment of all countries and continents. So thank you so much for your support. I really second your words and I really hope that this network will contribute to this global goal. Well, now I would like to ask all of the participants to join me around an applause for all our outstanding speakers that has opened this launch event of the International Network of Soil Pollution. Now we will start with the technical session. So I can excuse some of you if you have the opening speakers. If you have other commitments, we will start with the technical part. Before that, I want to give some instructions for the participants. As you heard at the beginning, we have more than 2,000 registered participants. Initially, we thought about this event as a meeting, interactive meeting where all the participants can raise their hands, can speak loud, and can share their experiences, their ideas and their vision for this network. Unfortunately, because of the limitations of the virtual reality, we can now not have this as a meeting but as a webinar, but still you have the possibility to raise your hand. So when we start the discussion, please feel free to raise your hand and we will give you the floor to speak out, or you can also put your questions in the Q&A chat and we will address them. Thank you so much. So without further ado, I will now give the floor to Mr. Ronald Vargas, who is the Secretariat of the Global Soil Partnership. The Secretary, sorry, of the Global Soil Partnership. He will introduce a bit the scene of what the international community, especially the Food and Agriculture Organization has done in the last year to start working on soil pollution and to raise this topic and put it into the political global agenda. So Ronald, welcome, and now the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you very much, Natalia, and to all the speakers, the participants, and of course, our colleagues who have already opened this important event today, our real gratitude for being there. Well, let me share my screen in order to share some few slides with you about this important topic. First of all, yes, today is our the air day and that is why we are organizing the launch of this network today to adhere to the celebration. Yes, and I agree with our colleagues from WHO, of course, do we really need to celebrate? Yeah, well, if we will be there and different resources, maybe we will be complaining more than celebrating, but at least we want to take the launch of this event in order to commit ourselves towards fighting soil pollution. And I think that is why we are here today. There are many problems that our world is facing now. But one that really concerns us a lot, especially at the global soil partnership is pollution. Why? Because pollution as you and I'm sure all of you who are experts know the real issues with pollution in comparison to many other degradation types in our soils. The challenge is there. And, you know, the world has agreed to achieve sustainable development by 2030. But if we don't address all these challenges, it will be very difficult. And soils have a role to play because they do a lot for us when providing ecosystem services. But there is a strong evidence that we will not achieve the SDGs or the development or we will not talk about healthy food. If we don't address soil pollution, because as you can see here, soil pollution has a lot of effects. Unfortunately, negative ones in the provision of all of these ecosystems, but also as the interface between air and water, right. People usually talk a lot about air pollution, water pollution, but they then forget that the beginning of all these soils. And unfortunately, it doesn't stay just in air and soil and water. It goes also into our bodies and through food because it is part of the food chain. And that is where a lot of concern comes because sometimes human beings are not really valuing the resources, etc. And they are more interested on how they look like on how or how they are in terms of health. But there is a lot of studies are already showing us that unfortunately contaminants are coming to our bodies through different drivers. One of the main drivers, of course, is food, water, and there. Therefore, we really need to be concerned about it. And we are very concerned in FAO about this issue, because when talking about food security, we have to ensure that food is produced, that food is accessible to people. But then we talk a lot about food safety. How can we talk about food safety? We don't look at where our food is produced, how our air and our water are in terms of contaminants. We really need to be sure that they are free of these contaminants. And we started working on this topic when we launched the global status of soil resources report, and this was produced by our panel of experts, and they identified 10 threats. One of them was soil pollution as one of the major threats. But of course, if you analyze the threats, many of them have been addressed like soil erosion by many people and continues to be number one. To me personally, the one that concerns me more is soil pollution, because we call soil pollution a hidden reality. Why? Soil is always hidden, but pollution more than hidden, because many people are aware that exist, but very few are doing something to deal with it. Why? Because the implications soil pollution has economically, you know, it can affect many sectors, and also it can create a lot of panic among the population if they understand what is the extent of it. So really it's a threat that we need to address it now, otherwise we will have issues that we are already having, but they can increase. And because of this, we have been trying to work on this topic. And I'm glad that there are many initiatives taking place around the world, but I believe that we need more. And we need more support, more investment in order to really tackle this issue. There is a lot of information coming up, but still we need more actions because otherwise the sustainable development goals will not be fully realized if we don't tackle the issue of soil health. And particularly, we really need to address the issue of one health because currently we talk about environmental health, animal and human health, but we believe that soil health is fundamental in order to really have a complete approach. Otherwise, we will be missing a big part of the puzzle. And recently, there is more recognition of soil pollution as an issue. And we have been working very hard on this together with other UN organizations. The United Nations Environmental Assembly already addressed the issue of soil pollution and linked to that. We have organized the global symposium on soil pollution in 2018. And following that, we have worked together with all of you scientists in providing a global assessment on soil pollution. And of course, data and information are missing. And we know there is a huge gap, but still, we really need to see how we could move forward with this. And that's why we have a global, the outcome document on soil pollution that was marking the way forward. And we are focusing on four key actions. We need to fill the knowledge gaps because there is a lot of data and information missing in terms of where, which type of pollution is where, what are the trends, etc. We miss also legal frameworks that can address this issue. We need to work hard on raising awareness of general public and decision makers and advocate for action because that is fundamental. And we really need to join forces and advocate for international cooperation. We are really glad that the European Union has a very strong program and commitment to fight pollution. And we really hope that that commitment can be exported globally and all countries around the world can be committed to fight soil pollution because it is really important. And we are trying to do so through this network, of course, and we hope that we will join forces to really fight not only from the science from the academia but all together because this is a real threat that can affect us all. So today we will be launching this network and we really hope that you all plus all the stakeholders can join us because the only thing we want to do is to prevent, try to prevent pollution, but also to deal with it in the places that is taking place now. It requires a lot of efforts, investment, it requires commitment, but I'm sure we can do it only together. So I'm really glad that you are here and that you will be joining INSOP and I really want to thank you all for being here but especially for helping us to build this network and fight pollution. Thank you very much, Natalia. Thank you very much, Ronald, for setting the scene on what we have done over the last few years. So now we will start really with the launch of this network and for this I'm very pleased to give the word to my colleague, Miss Sergius Ustinov from the Global Soil Partnership Secretariat, who will be the coordinator of this network, and everyone will present us in brief the vision, mission and goals of the network, although later on we will have the opportunity to discuss it more in detail. So Sergius, welcome, and the floor is yours. Thank you Natalia, I hope you can hear me well. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to all participants to all who joined us this afternoon. This is the launch of the International Network on Soil Pollution. As Natalia mentioned, I would like to give a quick and short presentation on division, mission goals of the INSOP, why is it important, and what we would like to achieve in it. As mentioned by speakers in the past, pollution is one of the biggest environmental problem globally, posing a big risk to the environment and human health. In 2015, the GSP Global Soil Partnership together with ITPS, which is intergovernmental technical panel on soil pollution, identified it as the major threat to the world's soil and began to collect data at national, regional and global levels. As can be seen here from the graph in the slide, which was produced by the Global Assessment Soil Pollution Report very recently in 2021 by FAU, the sources of soil pollution are vast and they vary and range from industrial activities as diverse as energy production from industrial activities to dying of our clothes, mining, agriculture, transport, you name them, to everyday activities we carry at homes. In 2017, approximately 2.3 billion tons of chemicals were produced globally, and this number was doubled the amount of produced chemicals that was in the year 2000. Threat is increasing from newly emerging contaminants like synthetic or natural occurring chemicals that are not commonly monitored in the environment for which no regulatory guidance values are available. But not only synthetic chemicals pose a risk to the environment and human health, but also naturally occurring chemicals like heavy metals, other rare earth elements as beasties or even naturally really nuclides such as radon. In 2019, GRC report produced an estimate figure of 2.8 million sites that are potentially contaminated only across the EU countries. Therefore, having this in mind, we're in urgent need to stop soil pollution and start to manage and remediate those sites that are already affected by the pollution. Having this in mind, our vision of this network is that new soil contamination should be prevented as much as possible, but when it occurs despite preventative and other measures, the risks should be immediately addressed. Therefore, the vision of INSOV is to take a swift action and reduce soil pollution to levels that are no longer harmful to both people's health and ecosystems and any environmental compartments involved. The mission of the network will consist of the following four points. We need to support and facilitate joint efforts towards reducing the risks of soil pollution. We need to strengthen technical capacities and legislative frameworks for the prevention of soil pollution. We need to promote the exchange of experiences and techniques and technologies, best available techniques for sustainable management and remediation of polluted soils. And finally, we need to address key knowledge gaps and improve technical capacities in order to detect, quantify, map and monitor soil pollution as well as to remediate. Ladies and gentlemen, the first major studies from soil pollution started back in 70s, although today in 2022 we're still facing major gaps in this field. Therefore, in order to succeed and reduce those gaps, we need to cooperate together in order to achieve the following goals. We need to increase efforts to identify, assess, map, monitor and remediate contaminated sites so that soil pollution will no longer pose health or environmental risks. Secondly, we need to provide an international forum for the generation and dissemination of knowledge on soil pollution. We need to promote an exchange of good practices and scientific knowledge and innovative solutions in order to manage polluted soils in a sustainable manner. And also we need to establish interdisciplinary cooperative links between all involved parties such as governments, academia, private sector and society in order to stimulate the development of cleaner and more sustainable solutions and consumption options. Last but not least, we need to strengthen technical capacities through coordination among existing networks. And we believe that only uniting together, we can achieve those goals and have a positive outcomes, because all of us here have the role to play. And therefore, we encourage all of you to contribute your knowledge, passion, skills and experience in combating soil pollution by joining NSAP. Thank you very much for listening and I hope you will enjoy the rest of the webinar. Natalia, thank you. Thank you so much, Serge. I think your presentation was very clear. And all the participants will have a better idea of what we want to do with this international network on soil pollution. So thank you so much. Now, well, we are not inventing any wheel. We are not the first one working on soil pollution at the international level or even regional or national level. There are many other initiatives that are working on this topic, have been working on this topic for many years. And we want to bring them all together to this table to join forces and to try to reach all the different levels of stakeholders that Ronald just mentioned before. This is why we have invited them or some of them. Unfortunately, we could not invite all the existing networks, but we have invited some of the ones that are working with us since 2018 more closely to give a brief presentation of what they do, what the network do, and how they can contribute and join efforts with this network to achieve our common goal of soil pollution. So now I have the pleasure to invite them all to present briefly what they do and how we can contribute and can work together. Our first speaker in this new section of the day regarding soil pollution initiative is Professor Ravi Naidoo from the Global Contamination Initiative. Professor Ravi, you have the world. Thank you very much, Natalia for introducing me and also providing me an opportunity to present an overview of the work that my center is doing. Let me just see how I can share the screen. Sorry about that. I'm just trying to see how I can share the screen. Here it is. Thank you very much, Natalia. In the first instance, I would like to acknowledge the introductory remarks, particularly from Maria and also from Joachim. In the first instance that we must not leave legacy contamination for future generations. And as Shayoklin has mentioned in his presentation, that pollution is, is about air, it's about soil and it's about water as well. And all of these are really components of what we call the critical zone. If the air is polluted, we don't see what's present in the air, we breathe contaminants. If I present, provide to you two glasses of water with one that is contaminated unless you have excess copper in there. You won't see the difference between the two. You might be drinking contaminated water. Equally, if I give you two bags of soil, one is contaminated and ask you to distinguish between the two. But just by looking at it, you won't be able to do that. And that's one of the reasons why having worked on contaminants for nearly 30 years now. We have initiated global contamination initiative, which is now renamed as global care lines. And I'm going to take you through what who we are won't go into science, but just touch on some of the things that we are doing. And what we think we could do collaboratively jointly to help minimize and also clean up the environment. And therefore, very quick overview of pollution one slide. This is a problem, some of which we have already had and also from Ronaldo, the impacts, the challenge, what global care lines is and what we have been doing via global connections, and something on building capacity as well. The reason why we are here today and the reason why FEO is moving forward and focusing so much on soil pollution is that we recognize that environmental contaminations are global problem. We all know about that. And these two images that I have here shows that long term exposure can have devastating impact and the top one here is the tributal tin. Apologies. Tribal tin exposure to the viral with the sexologon coming out of the head. And the second picture image is asked the low dose, but over a long period, leading to what we see there and ultimately death as well. We often fail to differentiate between point or non point sources with non point sources, often recognized and identified as diffuse pollution point sources are highly contaminated sites, small areas but very high concentration, not just impacting soil, it can impact groundwater as well and through erosion reverence systems as well. In contrast, when you look at diffuse pollution, this is low doses of contamination, just like cadmium in agricultural soils, pesticide, for example, and there are areas where we have ultra low doses of mercury because of mercury mining, and then virtualization of mercury and then being disposed somewhere else. And the way we manage these contaminants is very, very different from diffuse contamination, for example, you just cannot replace soil, you cannot extract the contaminant. So you can only, what we can do is risk manage these as well. I won't go into treatment technology but just highlighting that they're just not highly contaminated sites but we also have large areas of diffuse contamination as well. Now, we heard about the scale of the problem, greater than 100,000 is what I thought 10 years ago, and what two decades ago there was this publication, where estimated registered synthetic chemicals was 80,000, of which only 0.25% of chemicals was required for safety testing, meaning many chemicals were out there that were not tested at all. And most recent is that we have 144,000 chemicals and US Department of Health noting that two and a half thousand chemicals are synthesized and released every year. Now if you look at contaminated sites, this is published information, and just look at the first two columns, you can see there's millions of contaminated sites and I think you can include 2.8 million in EU countries and we have had 600,000 there but the latest is probably 2.8 million, then there's Eastern Europe as well, yet to be quantified but there's one report from, I think it was EU, European Environment Agency, listing two and a half thousand potentially contaminated sites. Now this does not include South America and Middle East and Africa. Now these are all where most people live, densely populated areas, and then you go out of this region, you have all the diffuse contamination that we have to deal with as well. Now this report here from WHO that annually 7 million people die from exposure to pollutants and more recently the same number again was published and therefore breathing air with pollutants, some people don't know, some might know, but the devastating impact of air pollution. And if you look at this here in 2004 publication, 4.9 million people die from direct exposure to pollutants and add that to air pollution and this is air, water and soil and food crops. Add this to air pollution but 12 million people die every year and look at HIV, AIDS, tuberculosis, traffic, extensive malaria, not as many as the number who die from exposure to pollutants. So looking at that, I'm asking this question, what is it that we need to do to minimize pollution and also to help clean up the environment. And when I look at what we have is that the country that are richest they're investing the most, the Y axis is investment, and the countries with GDP, they invest the most in cleanup. And when you look at the number of people helping clean up, that's the country's way of many people trying to do that. Then when you look at developing countries, not enough resources there, in terms of finance, not enough resources in terms of capacity. And the key question is, what can we do to help build capacity, and where can we get the financial resources to help these countries as well. So to remediate all contaminated sites is therefore our next great challenges we have had today as well. So global care, which is contaminated initiative was launched in 2013 with a new name now, Global Care Alliance. And the vision is to minimize the exposure of humans and the earth's biosphere to anthropogenic chemical contamination from all sources. And what can we do by helping build capacity that can help us achieve this vision that we have a mission therefore is to define quantify and set limits to help clean up and devise new ways to curb the growing chemical assault on human health and the biosphere. Global care is a worldwide worldwide knowledge network we've been working on this we've got quite a number of people who joined us now. It's not about just capacity building, what is new science that we can come up with, how can we build a database that brings together all the knowledge that we have in countries like us for example North America, the Europe. How can we bring that together how can we then diffuse that in those countries where it's needed. Now, and what can we do to help them implement these as well from technology perspective policy and training as well. So knowledge of take of global care meetings. We've been running these meetings forums and networking for researchers and environmental managers and regulators, providing that high level training, bringing industries together as well. We've seen that many industries are now recognizing you and you and sustainable development goals which we are promoting working with academics working with policymakers as well, and I want to join hands with all of us who are presenting today to see how we can take this forward and how can we collaborate and in doing so help FEO help you and achieve what their vision is as well. Global care is well coordinated cluster now with global connections, and I have got tremendous support from people in these different countries who are coming forward every time I try to run a training program. People put their hand up and they can't come forward without me spending money, they help us run this workshop and to bring the workshops together. And go out there and try to raise money as well. For me getting external funds is a challenge, but I always look at our future generations. If we do not do what we need to do. Every one of our future generations there will be posing significant risk and humanity as well from that perspective. So global care training that we have building capacity is not just about training on one aspect, and you can see from this, the whole load of things that that we are that we are linking to training such that people in their own country can take this on board, work with their government departments work with industries to deliver approaches and way forward where we are minimizing as well as at the same time cleaning up the environment and that must go to primary school level, which is what we are doing because global cancer care has primary school students awards, high school students awards and university as well, where they write things about environment and we judge and then award them as well not a lot of money, $500 or $1,000, but it really brings them together as well. Now nobody gives me money until I go there to them approach them, and I myself invest as well from particularly from from from competition that I have in primary school, high school is personal investment, because I want to see a clean environment as well. So what have been delivered thus far. So global cancer care and global center for environmental remediation the University of Newcastle. We've run about more than 200 workshops, 160 PhDs from different countries run 15 international conferences in a number of countries, three global global congresses. So this was in Indonesia, China, India, Korea to actually for in Malaysian government is running one now in September this year and of course CRC care and global care lines we are running cleanup 2022 during 11 to 15 September invited right to me and I will see what we can do to to get your presentations and participation where possible. And along with that we have trained not more than 9000 practitioners from Australia and 30 other countries. So what I want to bring to all of you is we're there to work with you collaborate with you and where possible step in and provide this training as well. So with that, I'm just leaving you with my email address and be very happy to answer questions and thank you very much and tell you and FIO for inviting me to be part of this forum. Thank you very much, Professor my do very interesting presentation. And thank you for setting also the scene of what we will be discussing today. Our next speaker has also great experience over 30 years working on HCH and pesticides as part of the international HCH and pesticides association. My name is Professor John Bigham. And now I kindly ask my colleague to share the screen on his behalf. John, the floor is yours and welcome. Thank you for participating. Yes, let me see. Yeah. Now, let me see. Can I start it? I think this is the last slide. Yes, yes, yes. So, thank you very much. I hope you can guide me around here. I tried to make it fast. And I just want to tell you that we developed a strategy to deal with HCH and Lindane. There is HCH and Lindane just two words. Lindane as we produced very much after the Second World War up to the 7080s and later in other countries up to the 2000s. For each kilo of Lindane, you produced a to 12 ton of waste. That means we have 600,000 tons of that material produced. And that means we talk about 4.8 to 7.2 million tons of HCH rates all around the world. So there is something to do. 70% of that waste is lying in Europe. So, I think this project financed by the EU is a very good start to see what the problems are in the EU. In this case, we have made an inventory of all the countries of potential sites, and we dealt with six plans for owners of sites to see that they can move on. And at the same time, we made a strategy. Next slide. Let me see. Is it working? Yes. A couple of things. I don't show you everything. Just a couple of points. The most important thing is, what did we learn over the last decades? Because we are already in the 80s, up to now 40 years we are remediation. So how can we learn from what we did, the mistakes and the good things and see how we can bring this further? Next one. Is it not working? Yes. What we found out is actually we found 300 sites, potential sites. We had originally 40, and also we could see that we have not a lot of owners anymore. There's no liability, mostly. And we can also see that we have enormous volumes and they're still around and they're still leaching. So we have to look at how to move forward. And what we see, we have so much experience, we can really use it. Next slide. So we're looking actually in this experience over the years, and I try to just give you on the next slide the most important issues which we use for the strategy. Next one. Yes. Now, what we can see actually is that whole actions of remediation, HGH or other products is dealing on cooperation, cooperation and communication. So governments, industry and specific branches who produce have to work together. And the way of financing, you can see actually very easily when you take certain solutions, for example, the petrol branch. If you look at the petrol stations in the Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium, these ones have been financed by the consumers. And what you can see is that if you put on a liter, which costs three euros, and you ask two cents to pay for the consumer, you don't even know that you pay. But the point is here that you have a lot of volumes, millions of liters you sell and the consumers pay for it, and they don't even know that they pay. So these are financial mechanisms, small fees on large amounts. You can have this for the gas penny, you can do that for pesticides, you can do that in many ways. This is a very easy way, and it's a sleeping one. It's really easy to pay. What we also have seen is there are regional developing associations, which have been working on the rehabilitation of contaminated land, very intense and very successful. And specifically Germany is a fantastic example on the success of these associations. This example in Nordrövelsfalia, where you have the oldest actually German industry, huge black area in the old days, is now quite green. And they have been able, due to the regional government, to gather with the communities and the industries of all levels that have been engaged to also to satisfy the demand for areas which are contaminated to clean them up because they need them. So you see there, the financial stream is coming in because industry and investors need it, and these associations, they are set up with all the stakeholders, and they are very successful. The same way you can see in the Eastern European parts, in Central Europe, we can see also in Eastern Germany, that the problems of liability in Central Europe is very high because all the foreign governments have been producing all these solutions. And you cannot make them liable. So what you can see is actually due to the fact that the German government made exemptions for contaminated sites. This opened the way to set up strategy and also set up these groups, these associations to tackle the issues they got to start funding, and the cooperation of the old parties helped in this case. In this case, for example, in Germany, you look at the big side of Bitterfeld, they were first able to get the people the jobs, because everybody was afraid of losing the jobs. At the same time, they were able to renovate these areas, cut pollution, and invest again. And also, the liability issues, the government issue here is very important for Central Europe, because most of the Central European countries are missing these issues and they still have this derelicted land. Many of them, biggest part, has not been tackled. So these kind of lessons are really, really good. For example, another thing is that in Holland, we have been very successful to do, say, the remediation from the 80s up to now. That's 40 years of experience. And you see at the same time that 10 years ago, the Dutch government said, you know, all the city plans are just hampered and buried due to the fact that soil contamination and soil remediation are working, because they're all waiting for these old sites to remediate. So here the government started 10 years ago and said, look, we have to move this. So they took 22 cities, the biggest cities together, get the central government, provinces, and the cities, plus all the stakeholders. So what we need to do, we need to tackle this, for example, the railways. Then every center of the town is a big railway station with all the pollution. It's a stakeholder, a very important one, and the water authorities. So they got these groups together, made big teams, and these teams have been strong in communication and working together. So they were proactive of getting all the parties in. And what you see now in the Netherlands, that these kind of issues are enormously successful. Everybody is in the boat, and everybody is approached. They had more efficiency and something ironic. And these big locations of HH, they are lying on the edge of the cities. And instead of having a big problem, a very costly problem, you create the opportunities. So there you have the city planning, long term, not over five years, 25, 30 years, long term you move on. And there are key solutions in this way. And some of them I mentioned, but I think these are the approaches which you can use, and everybody can duplicate, replicate, adapt them from the countries which are successful. And it's not only for HH, you can do that for everywhere. So here, next one. Let me see. So what you can see now, you can place all these things at certain levels. So you can do that AU level, country level, regional level and municipal level. And you can also see, for example, we have since four years, there are several regions, six regions in Europe, they started to set up a network on Lindane pollution. And these regions have very big problem with this issue. But by working together on European level with a little bit of money, they started to communicate, and they were astonished how much they have in common. And they start to really look at solution, and they work together more and more. So here this Latin is already now planning a second step in applications for a new project, Lindane at number two, because they're so enthusiastic and want to get more partners in, probably we end up next with the stand partners. So in this way, and we have already said to the Lindane group, you should establish an association, a European association to tackle this on regional level, communicate with your governments and communicate with you, but you have to place this on a very focused way, together with the government, politicians to solve it. So here are very good ways, what you can do at EU level, at country level. The Lindane scope can work actually at any level. Let me just show you the next slide. We made a kind of pyramid and it's even more clear. Next one. No, let me next one. Here you can actually see how the things work. It's the bottom of approach in this pyramid that's more clear. You put all these different elements inside. What do you do at local level. The problem is at local level, you have to get the engagement, the commitment is coming from the bottom, the problem owner, and you have to work towards when you have done your plan. And you see what investments are also there. You still lack a lot. And then you have to get a next level at regional level. And here you see again, you have to step by step getting more agreements specifically covenants agreements to work together to move things forward. But everything is combination, communication, prioritization and really work together on the problems. So at the end, when you see yes we still have not enough funding. Then, of course, you have to approach you level, but you will never help any any organization, any international organization will never help if you haven't done the work at your hometown, your home region and your home country. So also there we need again, the region should work with the country, the national government, and if they are politically opposite they don't want to help with certain but they must. So there are a lot of things to see that this should work, but this is the way forward, but this is actually very interesting and you can apply it forever everything. Next slide. Now a couple of points, just to the, you can also look at another way in Denmark, for example, one has the region have been very disappointed that all the big projects, the makeup project have not been treated. What happened for generations. And everybody goes around it small projects they like but the big ones they don't want to do. So the government protested accepted the government now it's over. And they got together say, and we want a program where we take the responsibility now for these solutions. Don't shift it like climate. Now we tackle it and our generation was deal with it. And I think this is a very nice strategy also to apply for all the countries in Europe. You know, don't shift the problem because now we have to deal. So there is actually a very good issue. The problem you see the government of Aragon has been really clever. They were so deep in this problem that they were able to get all parties. Opposition, everybody was involved to approve in their parliament. And you need united plan, a strategic plan to which we deal for 25 years, they have the commitment, and if the greens are on the blues are on the blacks are on, they have to do it. This is a fantastic achievement, also an example, how you can do things. Everybody can do it if they want. So I think these are very good examples and I think let me see next one. I think we have. I think I should have done everything. This is one of the big fighters of the one of the biggest site in Denmark. He died last year. He has been working 60 years to fight for this. And at least he achieved that they're going to do it. So I think this is the last one I could show you one more. So this is my talk and I hope you have a bit of enjoyment. Last one here, we will organize our next forum. It's the 21st to the 24th of February in Zaragoza, Aragon in Spain, and we will announce it and we invite you and government of Aragon wealth comes you all in the center of Zaragoza in the Caja Rural Aragon beautiful place. And also we will show you also the site in Aragon in Sabanyaniku show what they have done so far and they still have to do. I think there's an ideal opportunity for those ones who don't talk about theory and want to do he you see what has been done and will be done. So I think this is an example for all the practical people who want to change something here you come. Thank you very much. Thank you very much and really interesting presentation and I think you have clearly state that we need to join forces and to work from the very local to the international level. And there are some different steps that we all take, we all can take at the different level so thank you so much for bringing this example. I think we can really learn from you and replicate this initiative for many of the contaminants so thank you for being here and for joining this presentation. Now I would like to give the floor and sorry because I'm running a little bit but because we are many otherwise we will not have time for everyone. Next speaker, sorry, is Mr. Laura Bertha Reyes from the International Union of Soil Sciences and she will tell us a bit more about the group that they have in the USS and how we can collaborate together both networks. So Laura you have the floor. Thank you. Thank you to you, Natalia, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, on occasion of the launch of the International Network on soil pollution and on behalf of the International Union of Soil Sciences, I want to congratulate all of you on this day, the day of the earth. And celebrating the day of the earth, I want to express the USS support and willingness to collaborate with the international network on soil pollution of FAO. Based on the fundamental knowledge of soils and their properties worldwide, soil scientists united in the International Union of Soil Sciences since 1924 have made major contributions to combat different forms of soil degradation focusing on sustainable development as a prerequisite for peace in the world. In this regard, in August 1998, the working group of soils of urban industrial traffic and mining areas of the International Soil Science Society today International Union of Soil Science was founded during the 16 USS World Congress of Soil Science in Montpellier, France. Also, as an organization committed to the sustainability of the solar source in 2015, the year of the soils, the USS International Decadent of Soils once again defined it as one of the two main objectives to stop all kinds of the soil degradation. The aims of SWITMA are promote soil science in a strongly anthropogenic areas where human future will meet major challenges, stimulate multidisciplinary research and teaching for a better understanding and sustainable management of SWITMAs, increase the impact of soil science in the decision making process for urban land management, create a community of scientists dedicated to urban soil issues and communicate to other communities. On this regard, the USS shares with FAO not only its commitment to soil resource sustainability, but also several of its main objectives to achieve it and one of the most important is to help soil pollution to stop soil degradation. Therefore, once again, our scientific organization with the support of all national soil science societies that make it worldwide wants to express our willingness to conform together a virtual circle of war to face soil pollution. Soil pollution, according to Rodriguez Eugenio, refers to the presence in the soil of a chemical or substance out of place and or present at a higher than normal concentration that has adverse effects on any non targeted organisms. Chemicals is directly related to the real declaration on environment and development, which in principle proclaims that human beings have the right to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature. Meanwhile, SDG 9 draws our attention to the fact that the contamination and pollution of water, air and soil because of the inadequate management of chemical industrial mining and agricultural activities contribute as well as the absence of waste management practice as principal causes of the severe impact on the whole biological industrial flora and fauna, terrestrial and aquatic affecting planetary biodiversity and therefore the balance of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Day by day, a awareness increase about the need to produce and process food and raw materials that natural resource offer us through environmentally friendly process and one of the possible paths towards achieving this environmentally friendly process and products is the practical practice of one chemistry that allow us to seek roots and carry out chemical processes that reduce the negative impact that has been carried out so far on the environment. This is a fundamental premise of sustainable development, but it is also one of the fundamental pillars of green chemistry and it is in this sense that green chemistry is a natural way from which to start to contribute to the planet planetary viability. The USS is willing to work together with FAO as a partner not only in the dissemination of all its activities among our scientists and national societies, but also through the effective participation of the USS working group of scientists in promoting and exchanging good practices as well as sharing interdisciplinary knowledge to stimulate the development of sustainable solutions. In this regard, the USS also proposed to FAO to organize joint activities, launching worldwide awareness initiatives, promoting joint interdisciplinary work with green chemistry networks, and educating children and citizens to help soil pollution to stop soil degradation. FAO and USS should work together joining efforts to face the enormous challenge of soil pollution since we work for the same purpose to preserve soil resource as a common good of humanity. From the USS, we are clear and convinced that together we are stronger. Thanks for your kind attention. Thank you so much, Laura, for your presence. I know it's a bit earlier for you in Mexico, so thank you so much for these words are from also setting the scene on how we can collaborate together. Thank you. Our next speaker is Mr. Marco Falcone from ISPRA, the Institute for Protection and Research on the Environment, and he will introduce us about the Rente Quiro Expo that happens every year since some years already. And he will tell us how we can collaborate together. So, Marco, welcome. Hi, Natalia, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you and we can see your screen. Perfect, so can start. First of all, thank you for inviting me and I'm honored to be invited as speaker in this really important venue. I'm a member of the scientific committee of Rente Quiro, and I represent so the scientific committee where are present, many of also the speakers that are present today. And regarding Rente Quiro, how a conference may help the names of ISOP. Let me introduce Rente Quiro, that is, brings together soil and groundwater risk assessment remediation practitioners from across Europe and increasingly also from around the world to share their experience and knowledge. Rente Quiro is a yearly conference of one week. This year will be 1923 of September, 2022. First two days will be fully online. The last three will be hybrid with the meeting room in Ferrara, Italy, but also broadcasted online. And the reason why a conference may help is that it is completely free to attend, free for speakers from public companies, academics, NGOs, there is just a fee for speakers of private companies. We know that many experts are from developing countries and it's not easy to get funds to pay a fee that sometimes is half of the wages looking to the most important conferences worldwide or also for traveling. It is completely free, just internet connection and the registration like this meeting of today. And so I leave you the link to the call for abstract and the abstract template that follows SETAC specifically because for fostering also the knowledge about soil remediation, we signed a contract in agreement also with SETAC with this scientific journal. And regarding the topics you see that are many, many topics that we will cover and that will be sessions, just let me underline some characterizing soil health, climate change and soil nexus, military sites. This is under the debate now that are many areas that are under military occupation and let me give a big hug to our Ukraine experts that are there are many also online today. And so, apart this, there will be also some challenging topics like new ways to characterize like a high resolution psych characterization, chemical sensors, you can see digital innovation and you can see a number of topics that we will cover. The deadlines are closed at 30, 31 of May. For public parties and just 30 of June for private companies, the scope is of this conference it also to increase awareness around this topics because yeah, we want to also in some in countries worldwide, the knowledge about about this, these problems, these environmental problems. Not only the call for abstract that will be also high level training courses, I had just some some meetings with with with some institution we will have the joint research center and European Commission that will organize a policy session. User Army Corps of Engineer that will organize a fighter mediation sites that site stabilization training a STM international phase one the famous phase one of a STM and molecular biological tools for supporting and monitor natural attenuation. We have said past TCP it's an acronym that that is a research institute connected to the Department of Defense of United States with we will speak about unexploded ordinance and fitness transporter related to munitions that is under under the public debate like I like I said, I TLC with the background values that we have some places in in the world where we have a very high background values and we have we have to think also how to manage risk about those background values that we see from the previous presentation for instance the difference between point sources and diffuse pollution and sometimes we have background values that could have a could have a problems and so there will be a training from my TLC other two trainings should should still to be decided with the eyes us and the Claire. These trainings will be offered for free by these institutions, so it is a great occasion to for for who is interested to learn something more. And there is also another big challenging event that's called. It's called the sustain it on that is a 24 hours starting from 20 September 2022 12 GMT and with the land after 24 hours and 21 of September, and would be a 20 hours. And over a whole day we are news how people are working towards individual SDGs, breaking down barriers to assess assessing the lessons we are learning in making our soil and groundwater safe for us, and for the earth. Other creators experts and speakers we will be asked to explain what their countries are doing to achieve the SDGs in some members as well as any other attendance may propose their speeches to this email and this is our our logo. And then we in Remtec Europe we have a network of 300 ambassadors of the so called Remtec Europe ambassador some are also are also present and I say a lot to them from 40 countries they're coming from public authorities academia, and they see a strong connection with the in so pains in so pains are providing generating providing an international form for generation dissemination knowledge, promote exchange and good practices, create the cooperative links for a cleaner more sustainable solutions, and strengthening the couple technical technological capacities capacities coordination among existing networks and I think this network could be together and the work work together to foster that those aims. Last final remarks, I will leave you with the quotation of Charles Darwin, it is the long history of humanity that those who learn to collaborate and provides most effectively have prevailed the Charles Darwin looking to to the far Galapagos archipelagos, the find found a theory that there was a was incredibly breaking the conventional thinking of that time. Let me also quote the sustainable development goals number 17 that recognize the need for revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development partnership to make connections and share experience inspire professional practices and the website is we all serve and live in and so Remtec Europe absolute will be honored to part the the insop initiative last thing as many in the chat are can't wait for presentation I'll tell you that I will post the PDF of my presentation directing the in the in the chat. Thank you very much, Natalia and hope to have to have stayed in on time. Thank you very much, Marco. Perfect really. And yes, this is really the aim of this network be the network of the networks share experiences participate in one and another conferences meetings. So we can really learn bring different stakeholders, the table and share experiences and look, which is the most important parties look for solutions because this is a problem that we cannot keep ignoring, and we really need to act now. So thank you so much Marco. For all the, the participants we will share all the presentations on the recordings afterwards. So don't worry, you will get all the information also for those who couldn't participate. Our next speaker is coming from the joint research center of the European Commission is Mr. Piotra both. Yes, sorry, I'm not pronouncing it properly, and he will present us about the European soil observatory. This will also help us, especially in the first working area of the insop regarding the assessment of soil pollution so Piotra, you have the floor and we are really looking forward to hearing you. Thank you very much, Natalia, and welcome to everybody. I'm really pleased to be part of this big event. I'm impressed by the number of participants and the quality of the presentation that we have heard so far. And so when we can, we can really enjoy working together, and also improving the networking in that in that sense. And indeed I would like to present some elements on soil pollution and the work that the European Commission is doing. So I'm going to share the presentation with you. I hope that you see my screen and my presentation. Thank you, Natalia. My presentation will point to some of the elements that that we are working on as the JRC as the joint research center of the European Commission. So, the elements will be the EU soil observatory. And I will provide you some information about the observatory that we have launched, and then the user stakeholder forum that is allowing us to have the contact with stakeholders and the technical working group under this construct that is working more specifically on soil pollution. And so the European soil observatory was launched by the joint research center over a year ago, and it has a couple of goals. So the first goal is the EU wide soil monitoring so we hope that by launching, maintaining and evolving the soil observatory, we will be able to have more insights on the monitoring. And then we would like to build a stronger European soil data center. The data center is located at the JRC. We are dealing with it and using soil observatory, we would like to enhance it. And then another goal is the monitoring of soil related policies. And we would like to follow the implementation of the European policies and also being able to see what's the impact of those policies and whether there are some measures to be implemented to correct if necessary. And then goal number four is the support for research and innovation. So through our work networking and also providing the stakeholder forum, and we would like to enhance this activity. Last but not least, by the European soil observatory, we are providing the stakeholder forum, which I will explain in the next slide. So through the EU stakeholder forum, we would like it to be the place where the ideas and views on particular issue can be exchanged. And so, by doing this, we enhance the stakeholder engagement. We will also support soil literacy. I would like to underline here the proposed soil heaven food mission and that that is running now, and we'll have a big impact, at least in Europe and we hope also at international scale. And of course, we would also collect the feedback through the stakeholder forum. The first meeting took place of the stakeholder forum, and there's some info online so there's links in my presentation. And the stakeholder forum launched particular groups of interest. One of the groups is group on soil pollution. So you see here the link and you can have more information or you can contact me if you'd like to receive more. And what's the work of the technical working group on soil pollution that we have announced. Our first task is to provide the support to the clean soil outlook report. We would like to see what's the current situation, what are the trends, where are the gaps to be closed. So as you see here. At the first place, we are going together with the technical working group on soil pollution to analyze synergies and trade-offs between different EU policies we are working in the EU context. And then we would like also to help to translate early warnings into recommendations or on pollutants of increasing concern. We are speaking here about ultra fine particles emerging contaminants, pesticides, metals. So these are the substances that probably exist in our European soils we can see them through monitoring, or we maybe cannot see them, but we are aware that they are there. And that's why we need the kind of early warning and to have a kind of watch list to get more information about the dose emerging contaminants. And then of course we are going to use the R-depsir approach, so driving forces, pressure, state impact and resources to analyze the situation. And in this report we are going to provide some projections and foresight consideration. The clean soil outlook report will be the JRC report that will be ready by the end of this year and it will be a kind of rolling exercise. So the next one is foreseen in two years time, out of which we will distill the high level synthesis report that will be published officially by the European Commission. And what the situation that we are going to analyze concerning the soil pollution, of course, diffuse and point type sources of pollution. As Joachim Deugenio mentioned in his presentation, when we talk about zero pollution ambition, we have to take tackle all three media. So air, water and soil, and of course focus on different aspects and interactions between all those media. I will go through very rapidly through slides to save time but the presentations will be available. What are the European challenges for point type sources of pollution? First of all, we would like to be able to make a significant progress on the remediation of contaminated sites and also include legally binding provisions on contaminated site identification, inventorization and remediation. As Professor Ravi Naidu was presenting the numbers, we'd like to have more informative, more up to date numbers for Europe. And we have to think also about waste management and landfills in this context. When it comes to diffuse pollution, of course, we have to tackle the definitions and knowledge, and also the perceived obstacle that there is the lack of the knowledge on the extent of the diffuse pollution and how to monitor it and how to enhance research. Last but not least, in all of these aspects, digital technologies are important. How they can help us, how they can try to innovate our approaches. Last but not least, the multidisciplinary approach. It was already mentioned a couple of times during the presentations. So we are going to tackle for the time being the lack of this multidisciplinary approach to be able to model at the European scale some aspects. But we hope that with the research at some point we'll be able to provide the tools. My last slide, the flags diagram, I was mentioning the watch list. The watch list saw the kind of identification of a substance of concern that we would like to have more information or follow it up in the European soils. So we have developed and discussing with the technical working group on soil pollution, this flags diagram, how to identify, how to tackle the substance. So first of all, I would like to see the pathways of the substance to soil. Then if we see that there's no concern for ecosystems for health and for environment, there's no problem. But if the substance is of concern, maybe we have to include it in the priority list of substances being watched through a monitoring program. Or if we don't have enough information, maybe we have to put the substance on the watch list. Maybe we have to observe it over a couple of years, and then decide whether the substance is dangerous is present and has to be monitored more closely. If you want to have more information, please visit our website, the JRC website, and also use the EU soil observatory link that is provided in my presentation. So thank you very much for your attention. And I'm happy to answer the questions if any. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Well, now we have been moving a bit from the academia knowledge sharing knowledge generation. Now we are in the assessment part how to collect data how to harmonize data also which is very important. The next speaker will bring also the policy side is he's representing the common forum on contaminated land, Mr. Dietmar Miller-Graver, and he will bring us or he will explain us how this policy and policymakers network can also support the international network on soil pollution. Dietmar, it's a pleasure to have you and you have the floor. Hello, Daniel. Greetings from Vienna around the globe, the planet. Well, by today, Earth Day, you open a new window of opportunity we would hope. And it's a brief presentation how we can cooperate. The common forum is a network like the international network, but it's a regulator's network we existed roughly since more than 25 years. We had regular meetings two times a year, and our missions are rather similar to yours. We work on knowledge exchange. We want to build an offering discussion platform, and we not only want to do it within the governments but also with all parties and stakeholders. So soil and societies, it's really about one health we should work forward, and we need to work across scales and connect scales. So the new network should govern the others and even common forum and might be the missing link to strengthening strategies and improving actions globally. Well, joint ambitions and objectives are rather obvious. We are all wishing for a stronger recognition and add a stewardship of soil. Still, we need to do more to look for co-creation to improve our common understanding for making it available to all the stakeholders across the global regions. And of course, we need to underline by sound evidence based to enable better decisions. Last but not least, we should work on good communication. We need a storytelling. We need new narratives. So what is common forum thinking or might be discussing about the co-creation area with the international network on soil pollution. The focus for sure will be with the regulation of polluted soils. That's where the expertise of the network is. So here we are yet to share our experiences, the successes and the failures as well. And we really also want to learn from other peers to how to connect policy, science and society. And we all, there is a limitation in resources we will need to prioritize actions for taking pollution. The second line of action might be of interest in terms of the sustainable management and remediation of the soils. Just to tease and challenge you whether there could be further actions of interest. What I'm still missing is kind of well emergency response or rapid intervention force like responding to war on natural disasters. Just recently, last year there was a tsunami at the Pacific's and there was an oil spill at the port of Lima. And there was a need to really then react and exchange knowledge. So, but that's really then a personal basis today to organize that more straightforward that would be great. And besides all the knowledge we may offer that still how to support and organize financial funds for the real risky sites around the world that would be probably beyond common form for sure might maybe also be beyond your ambitions but still that's something to keep in mind maybe. And let me close. Well, just by two remarks. Please let us keep in mind that prevention is the most important. In terms of remediation. Look for the quote by channeling the nowhere, and I wish success to insop for making a difference in soil remediation. Good luck. Thank you so much. Did more indeed you have raised some important points and where I think FEO has a clear advantage is that we are in close cooperation and contact with member states, and it's our role and our mandate to support countries to react again against existing problems but also emergencies. And as you may know FEO has a very strong division working on emergencies. And I think this network and really support that division regarding pollution issues so this is a very important point to consider regarding the insubmission and vision. So thank you so much for bringing this to the table. Our next speaker will go more in detail regarding what the private sector can do, how companies can help and can collaborate to have a sustainable remediation. He's the president, the current president of Nicole Europe, Nicole is a network of mainly private companies working on remedy management of contaminated land, mainly industrial contaminated land. So, Mr Johan the fry, you have the floor thank you for being as with us today with us presenting Nicole network. Thank you, I'll see my slides appear I think automatically. Congratulations with this initiative so as as Nicole, we're all about collaboration and partnerships and I'm also happy that Marco actually referred to SDG 17, which strives to make organizations such as the ones that are together today to collaborate on other sustainable development issues right so without much further ado, I'll share a little bit around what Nicole does and how I think very practically actually how we can work together with a bit insult. So, if we can move to the next slide. And the one they're after you exactly. So what is Nicole Nicole was established over 25 years ago as an industrial network with funding from the European Commission that funding at one point dried up as as it usually does. And the members felt that the value of getting together as a community of practitioners was so valuable that it now became a member funded only network. So, according to, to more than industrial parties we have service providers as members consultants contractors legal organizations and academia academia is actually one of our growing groups. And what it really is of creating that network of practitioners who focus on cleaning up contaminated lands, finding state of the art solutions, look at innovative approaches, and, and how you can do this, the most effectively. Moving to the next slide, as a network as you would, as you would imagine, we have a number of workshops per year on a particular topic. We try to to flick between on the one hand more regulatory oriented topics, policy oriented and technological or technical projects so it switches. And we also have working groups, as you can see, on selected subjects and it's the members that decide what working groups they wanted what the scope and deliverables will be. We have one online stewardship, which is a very hot topic these days and which brings in the concept of circularity of soil and lands as as finite resources. So what you do with that when you have a contaminated lands. We've also instigated a number of awards, both on to award or reward organizations or individuals that come up with very innovative solutions or practical approaches that are quite novel that we want to create some visibility as well as awards for academic prowess or academic achievements that could be travel awards that could be just an award financial awards for a very good thesis in order to again stimulate academic development within our network. That often leads to publications position papers as you would imagine. And what we're also doing far more of is engage with other organizations and obviously the FAO is one of them. But we have representation in the EU soil observatory, we're discussing with the Alga in Australia and New Zealand. We have links with with Ravi that I think we should develop even further. We have spin offs of Nicole in Latin America and Africa that that are growing in terms of the collaboration that we have with them and then Dietmar of course we work closely with the common forum around common topics and we have sometimes joint workshops. That perspective. So moving to the next slide. What could be the contribution that Nicole can bring to insop. I came up with a number of ideas in the slides following could be joint workshops where we as as a common community right we we think it's a hot topic it's an it's an item that needs attention that you join that we develop workshops around that where you share expertise and actually come up with solutions that are workable that are practical that can be that they're achievable right because we want to go beyond theory here I believe. So how how do you do that what do you do what expertise you need and what is missing. That leads to thought leadership that you can jointly develop. And I think insop and I really wish that as as this network of networks that we can weigh on cleaning up contaminated land and groundwater and by extension other environmental media. That would be fantastic to achieve that. That takes you to the element of risk and what is risk and what needs what needs clean up. Immediately to sustainability. And ultimately as I mentioned earlier land stewardship is this this newer topic that we in the call at least try to develop some some leadership around as to what does that mean in practice. What does it mean when you say soil is a finite resource that you need to take care of, and therefore you bring in circularity and continuous ability to use that soil for all the purposes and values that it brings. So those are ideas. They're generic but I'd love to develop them further as insop develops. And let me move on to something else that in the call where we're trying to build. It's quite fresh. And it's in the next few slides, which is the Nicole foundation. We are aiming to set up a foundation by the end of the year. And what he is, as you see, is to focus on orphan sites sites where the beluter base principle is no longer achievable. And where we are looking for on the one hand problem owners. That could be an FAO that could be a national government that says we have this major issue. We don't know how to tackle it we don't have the expertise we don't have money. The foundation would be this, this nexus where you bring in expertise from Nicole and beyond. Right. As well as donors, industrial organizations that are willing to chip in and volunteers because one of the strengths of networks like Nicole but it's true for any of the other networks that have that I've seen in today is that you have this enormous community of expertise. And more importantly, a lot of people that are retiring from that community. I think we're seeing this first generation that has been full time in employment around contaminated land management that is retiring we see it in our network and in our professional community, but that still have a willingness to contribute and now actually have time to contribute to whatever it is that they like. And to provide that that opportunity for them to have a venue or or or a scheme that they can participate in and contribute to solving some of these very hard to solve pollutions. The aim is to restore biodiversity support the production of safe food, and again applying circular economy to to land in general that that is the ultimate aim of what the foundation would like to achieve. Moving to the next slide and I and the last slide actually what would be the benefits is that you bring in all these stakeholders, and they all have their own particular benefits right then NGO or a multilateral organization would receive fast, easy access to skill professionals for particular issue that they want result resolution, and I have one example actually in the last slide here after. We have funders. Before we move to the next slide to go back one please. We have funders that could be professional industrial companies that will have an auditable process on how they can promote their own environment and social and governance objectives, and achieve UN SDG if if they have those as goals. The foundation would provide an auditable process for the for the donations they do. We have again the volunteers that have a setup where they can, where they can join and select projects to participate in. And ultimately all these parties would receive the benefit of professional project management with clear scope management target management, financial management that leads to an actual practical results. And all of that is in the next slide. And we're working with FAO on this one is where we have assembled a group of experts from across Europe and Latin America, but because this particular project is in Latin America, where we're running a pilot to look at cadmium impacts to cocoa. And how we can come up with a with a simple scheme that can then be applied worldwide as to how you deal with the fuse pollution that affects a particular crop. And how you can actually identify the sources maybe come up with some remedial activities. And look at, you know, build a conceptual site model, and then, you know, come up with some tangible approaches on how you solve that problem. No promises that you can actually solve every problem, but we want to at least use the pilot to come up with a methodology that is simple to use. So this is one typical thing that a foundation organized by Nicole could could achieve. And we're very enthusiastic about this about this project. And with that, I would like to conclude and again thank you for the opportunity for us to contribute to this extremely important initiative. Thank you. Thank you so much, Johan. Yeah, I think this, this foundation is exactly one of the leading examples that we want to follow with the international network on solution to bring together experts that can provide these expertise to to the rest of the world. And as you mentioned on as we have seen, many of the most knowledgeable colleagues are already retiring so it's our opportunity to really learn from them and to to build the capacities of the new generation so thank you so much for contributing to this. Now we will hear a bit more about the branch of Nicole in Latin America. It will be her director, Ms. Ana Cristina moedy, who will present what Nicole Latin America specifically doing on sustainable remediation but especially on building capacities so Anna, I see your slides, you have the floor. Thank you, Natalia. Is it on presentation models. Can we see your screen. No. Yes, perfect. Okay. So, thanks a lot Natalia for the, for inviting echoes Brazil to present the initiative in Latin America. And as you said, I'm the president director president of echoes Brazil, which is an NGO based in Sao Paulo Brazil with 20 years of experience in projects involving remediation of contaminated lands conservation of biodiversity impact investment climate change with projects that aim to collaborate with the regeneration of the global ecosystem. We work with projects with the public and the private sector during these 20 years. If we go back in history to see the history of contaminated land in Brazil. We see that remediation is still a very new topic compared to Europe and to the US so if we go back to late 90s, early 2000s, we have only a few technologies and methodologies that are still in very early time and we have only a few consulting companies and industries working very independently with no contact and no research between them. We have an environmental legislation related to contaminated sites that is still in early stage, and very bureaucratic and a very slow process for the companies. And during this time in 2002 echoes Brazil decides to do a first seminar on remediation of contaminated sites. That was the first of its kind in Latin America and the first edition was organized in partnership with the GIZ GIZ the German organization that could bring some international speakers to our event. And the idea was to share knowledge and to bring some innovative solutions to the Latin America reality. And during these 20 years that the seminar could, could follow the market growth and see how the market developed in this last years in these 20 years where we organized 12 editions. And one of the very important achievement of this in this event was the creation of Nicole Brazil in 2013 the idea was emerged during one of the seminar during one of the editions of the seminar. And the objective was to, to create a tropicalized version of the Nicole Europe that was presented by Johan. And to bring that to the Brazilian reality first and later on we expanded to other Latin American countries, organizing some events but to bring together these experts and to share the knowledge in Latin America. Because Brazil does the, the, the administrative support and the organizational support which is done by Luciana and from echoes Brazil, and also the financial management of this network. The, the only of its kind in Latin America that brings together the industries, the service providers and the universities, and this collaboration has been very fruitful we have been able to develop very interesting events and workshops and so on. Nicole is organizing several workshops and events in Brazil but also in other countries of Latin America we did one in Lima in 2018 we organized one in Argentina, Nicole is participating in some international events. And to mention one interesting case is last year we participated we presented during a workshop in the Nicole Africa event the Sustrem Africa 2021 a case of a mega site that we discussed in Brazil to bring it to the African reality so that is an example of events that are happening in partnership with other networks already. We also doing a lot of publications position papers white papers in Portuguese in Spanish that are being used by the community in Latin America. And for you to see some of the numbers of Nicole we are being very active so we have several companies participating we have many active members we did a lot of podcasts in the last years during during during the pandemic where people were at home we've been able to organize several virtual events. And so we have been very active in the last years. And as my other colleagues also mentioned, I think it's very important to have this kind of exchange of innovative ideas and technologies. It was the way that Nicole Latin America started to have an exchange with other networks we are working like that in with Nicole Africa we are working on that cadmium project that Johann mentioned. And for us that's very important we are also expanding with other in other countries of Latin America. We have access to various relevant institution in Latin America, and we see a lot of possibilities of collaboration between the networks, of course for raising the awareness in global regarding soil health. So I leave you here my contacts, and from my colleague Luciana which is doing the secretary of this network, in case you have any questions and I'm able to answer them. Thanks a lot. Thank you very much, Hannah for this insightful presentation, and also for pointing out all the benefits of partnership so thank you so much. I'm afraid that we are running out of time so please participants if you have any questions for the presenters. I don't hesitate to put it in the chat, and I encourage my colleagues to address the questions that may be in the chat in the q amp a that are directed to you, because I wanted to have more interactive session here but I think it will be impossible, although it has been a pleasure to hear all of you and learning from your experience. Our last speaker for this section is representing the network called Claire from UK, who is providing services for all those involved in sustainable land reuse. This is Nicola Harris, who will present us about the clear network. Nicola, I think you are here you have the floor. Thank you very much. Can you see that in presentation mode. Not that we see the presentation. In addition, there you go. Is that working. Excellent. So I thank you very much to to everyone who's spoken before for the invite. Being the last person. I'm going to be very quick and building on what everybody has said and the huge value of networking and sharing sharing knowledge. And this is where Claire basically exists. It's all about sharing knowledge. So we were established back in 1999. We are a not for profit organization that works in a very broad environmental construction sector promoting sustainable land reuse. We are slightly different to the networks that presented earlier because we, we work directly with industry, so the practitioners, but we also work very closely with government, the regulators and academia. We often work on collaborative projects within the UK and internationally, but we are based in the UK. And we are focusing very much on improving efficiency and raising industry standards. And as I said at the beginning, we are all about knowledge sharing. So this is where we feel there's huge value working closely within SOP. Also, all of our publications are independently reviewed. We have a technical panel that are all independent, and they review everything that we actually publish. And we have a large library of guidance documents that are all freely available for everyone to access. And we also have a library of links to other industry groups publications as well. So things that are freely available we have links to, but the Claire library is is totally, totally free. As I mentioned, the wall, which is abbreviated from the Water and Land Library, it's a very large extensive list of links across the soil and groundwater sphere. So basically, lots and lots of publications are linked to there. So it's a really good resource for people to access. But the Claire publications, we have hundreds of technical publications that have all been peer reviewed that are easily digestible for people to access. So they cover research elements. They also cover practical demonstration of technologies. It covers specific technical areas so much more specific technical aspects or dealing with elnap or contamination, for example. So there's some really useful resources that people can access which I think would be really useful for the network of insert all the members. So we have a large network linkages across the globe. So people like Ravi we we link to and Nicole we participate in in dialogue with. So we also produce a monthly alert so the promotion again of insop that's a way we think we can help generate more activity. So we have a national forums regional forums that we link to and we help promote. So, again, this is a useful way that we can all work together, and it's all about promoting good, good practice. So I just wanted to then focus on some of the projects that we've been working on that we actually lead and run that I think would also be very, very useful for from the soil aspect. So we talk about them. We talk about reusing of soil because soil is such a finite resource. We actually manage a system within the UK, which is a voluntary system that is endorsed by our regulator of how we can use soil and reuse it on site rather than using new valuable resource. We have a very large brownfield network within the UK we reuse our land a lot. So we have a process that is documented. It's a code of practice that people could reuse in other countries and in fact they have used the this code in and replicated it in other countries. And again, there's, there's opportunities to replicate knowledge already developed for for INSOC. Again, another big area that was was mentioned about sustainability. We, we run the surf UK which is a sustainable remediation forum in in the UK, and that is a collaboration between industry, the regulators, academia and consultants. We've produced a number of technical documentation that, again, members can access they can use all free of charge. We've also under the surf UK framework, we've developed some simple tools to help people assess sustainability during site site work remediation. So again, these are all in existence all accessible or free of charge. So I think hugely valuable to people within within the network. And if people wanted to understand what sustainable remediation is. There's a three minute animation on the surf UK website that helps people understand the main principles of sustainable remediation. And that, again, is has actually been translated into 16 different languages. So all of these resources I think would be hugely valuable. The initiative that we run, because of the surf UK network, there are now surf sustainable remediation for across the globe. And we meet twice twice a year via teleconference, and we share best practice. We share knowledge, what we're doing within our own countries for sustainable remediation to help collaborate and joint initiatives. Again, these are things that I think would be hugely valuable to share across across in surf as well. And other things we are developing source screening values within the UK as a collaboration project. So again, this is an example of how people can work collaboratively within government, as well as regulators as well as practitioners to to build that share that knowledge and build that trust between each other. So we're developing that within within the UK. And last but not least, we're working on a really interesting European funded research project with with partners on reconstructing soils from waste. So again, the results of that will be available to be shared. And this is, this is hugely valuable because obviously we we've talked about the value of soil, and how we can reconstruct soil to prevent having to use the finite natural resources of soils. And this is also looking at the soil carbon capture and incorporating those those elements and how we can reuse some of the what would be deemed waste materials previously and how they can actually be generated into growing medium for for use on on sites. So all of this information is, you know, it's freely available from the from the cloud website. So I'd actively encourage you all to just access the information and if anybody needs further information, they can, they can contact me, me there. So, thank you Natalia. Thank you very much, Nicola. Well, I think, yeah, they're a huge bunch of information already out there. And what we can do is just make it more visible make it more accessible to everyone, and also to adjust or adapt some of these documents that has been produced for example for the UK to other national countries. So really, this is really the the aim of this network so thank you so much with this. Well, thank you to all the speakers it has been a long but very interesting session we have learned all the networks or not all some of the networks that are out there, doing great things. And I think it's really important that we all collaborate and leverage on what the others are doing. So I will just now pass the baton to my colleague search to continue with the the next session, where we will discuss more about the focus of this network we have been learning about what the others are doing, what are the possible connections that we may have. And now we will really enter into the discussion for what we want this network and what we want this network to focus on. So, search the floor is yours, you take the, the bottom for the next session. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Natalia. Thank you all speakers was very interesting informative discussion about learning about all different networks and organizations in the field. So, as Natalia briefly explained now, we will jump to the second part of the INSOP where we will learn more about how the INSOP going to be structured and what we aim to achieve so I hope you can all see my screen. So, in this part of the presentation, I'll try to be much shorter than I was planned, because Friday evening is approaching. So, in this presentation, we will cover the following topics. First now we'll explain our mission objectives and goals in the areas of work that INSOP is willing to work on in much more details. Then, as you know, you'll have filled in the survey once registering and at that survey we asked you if you feel that any additional activities of work you would like to see at INSOP. And so that's we've selected some of those additional activities of work that might be of interest for an INSOP. So we're going to open the poll for you to vote where we're going to add one, two or maybe all of them or perhaps none of the above depends on the votes to the INSOP. Following that, we're going to have in terms of reference briefing for a chair and vice chair position. And after that we have three candidates who will give us a two minute speech on their motivation why they would like to be a chair or vice chair of the INSOP. And the most interesting part we're going to do elections so that will be very interesting session now. So the first part of the presentation is that I'll going to explain you the four areas of work that INSOP will focus on under each of which various tasks will be carried out to achieve the results, which will be presented by Natalia later after myself. And then she will explain more details about each task under each area of work. In brief, those four areas are assessment, mapping of soil pollution, monitoring regulation of polluted soils, and finally, sustainable management and remediation. So in a broader sense, so let me go through each of them and what we're going to cover in each of those areas. So for assessment. Well, this area of work will focus on harmonizing laboratory methods for standard operation procedures for the measurement of soil contaminants including innovative technologies working together with another GSB network called Glossalan stands for Global Soil Laboratory Network. Ms. Miriam Ostinelli will give us a short speech about Glossalan and how she can see the synergies between these two networks between Glossalan and INSOP. What we also want to see in this assessment area of work is that the training program will be established for the application of harmonized methods as well as specialized technical equipment. For the medium and long term goal, our task will be to serve and compile all existing threshold values for different contaminants, the most common contaminants, contaminants of potential concern, and different land uses, not only agriculture but urban land uses, forestry, etc., where we would like to generate standard threshold values for the range for an international application because currently we don't have those kind of threshold values established for contaminants of concern. And this will also promote the inclusion of soil pollution metrics and indicators into a conventional soil service and indicator and the inclusion of data and information on soil pollution international and global soil information systems. So that's in brief what the assessment will focus on. Our second area of work is soil pollution. Well, as you know, the generation of spatial data sets on a distribution of polluted soils and potential source of pollution are of utmost importance in order to establish and identify those hotspot areas or areas of concern that can have the risk and possess the risk to human health and the environment. The existence of information on sources of pollution will also allow for a better understanding of the coexistence of contaminants and facilitate the management of sites with mixed contaminants. To carry out the mapping exercise and mapping areas, we need to collaborate more with another network of GSB, which is called NC, an international network of soil information institutes. The chair of the NC, Mr. Luca Montanarella, will give us also a brief speech and talk about what NC does and how we can also collaborate between NC and NSOP. The third area of work is monitoring and regulation of polluted soils. That's more related to regulations, because the monitoring of polluted soils requires the establishment of regulatory frameworks, which support the collection of information and the comparison data to define those trends. And this regulatory frameworks should include soil health indicators to assess the state of soil. Our network, NSOP, will advocate for the creation and strengthening of global, regional and national commitments in order to prevent, hold and remediate polluted soils. This area of work monitoring and regulation should help countries to develop and strengthen the monitoring of different sources of pollution from point source and diffuse soil pollution, as was mentioned by Professor Ravi Naidu and their differences at national regional levels. As part of its activity, this area of work monitoring and regulation will support countries in establishing national biomonitoring and epidemiological surveillance systems in order to identify, assess, monitor damaged and disease caused by soil pollution and support preventative measures. And finally, our fourth area of work will concentrate on remediation and sustainable management. As you know, the collection and dissemination of sustainable management and remediation practices and technologies for polluted soils with special emphasis on nature based solutions is very important. Hence, we would like to focus on nature based remediations where it's possible. This NSOP will work closely with the final network, NSOP, International Network on Soil Biodiversity, where Ms. Rosalina Gonzalez, the vice chair of the network will also give us a speech and presentation on the what NSOP does and how we can collaborate between each other. So technological transfer and cross-capacity buildings will be advocated from regions and countries with extensive knowledge and experience to the regions that are less developed and has less practice and experience. So that's going to be more kind of exchange ideas and practices between one country to another where it's needed. So those kind of four areas of work that we would like to concentrate and we will concentrate. As I said, each of those areas has already allocated tasks that we would like to discuss and agree on. But since we're a new network, we're open for a new areas of work that may be added to an NSOP. According to the service that we have received from all the participants, these areas of work were the most common for you that you have input and commented on. And now we would like to hear your opinion and see your votes, whether you would like to add any of those areas of work to NSOP. One of them is thematic trainings for different audiences. So provide more training to different population in rural areas and much more remote areas kind of education, which, as you heard, I haven't touched yet. So we think this can be added to the NSOP area. Second one is the relationship between not only soil but also groundwater, for example, because if we have polluted soil, the chance that we can have polluted groundwater or any other water bodies are quite high. So we can add this area of work in NSOP. Third one is awareness raising. Again, to have more educational trainings to different groups. Next one is translation of our findings to not only foul languages but also to other non-foul languages so that much more vast public can have access to the information. So planning can be another opportunity to add the area of work in a sense more investigative approach in evaluation, whether the risks are here for soil contaminants or not. And finally, food safety slash food quality and soil pollution, the relationship of how food quality changes with the polluted sites or where the crops are polluted by something. So those kind of areas of work that were open for you to decide if you want to see them at the area or not. So now I would like to draw your attention to the poll that I will launch in a second for you to vote. And I encourage all of you to vote and say to us whether you would like to add one of them or few of them or all of them or even none of them to those four pillars of work. So I would like Isabel to give me the access to launch the poll please, if it's possible. The poll is already allowed. Okay, perfect. So I encourage all participants attendees to vote for the area that you think will be benefit for NSOP to consider and allocate a different tasks to one of those areas. If you feel that it is not necessary, you can say none of the above, for example, here's an option for you. The excuse is not to vote. It's going to have a minute or two for everybody to have a chance to vote. I see it's already 40% of participants voted so let's wait a bit more. Okay, see people are still voting but just for sake of time I think we can stop here. Well as you can see the results on the screen right. So I encourage all of you to vote for them. And we also see that people would like to consider soil and water relationship at NSOP is one of the most important followed by food safety food quality and soil pollution. So I would encourage all of you to vote for the area that you think will be benefit for NSOP to consider and allocate a different task to one of those areas. So that's been decided thank you very much for your participation. In that sense, everything is recorded so make sure we will add those to NSOP. And where's my presentation. Okay, here is my presentation. Can you all see it. Yeah, full screen. Okay perfect. I'd like to move to one of the most interesting and interactive part of our NSOP network is to introduce terms of references for chair and vice chair position. So since this is the first time we're launching this network obviously each network needs to have both chair and vice chair, who will be responsible to ensure that NSOP plan is executed and work objectives are met in time and updated when necessary chair and vice chair will help to organize annual meetings collaborate with different GSB networks such as NC, NSOP, Glow Salon and GSB Secretariat will maintain active communication parties. It will also ensure that GSB 18 outcome document is executed and the NSOP is actively involved. The chair and vice chair also needs to report jointly with the GSB Secretariat and the ITPS chair to the GSB planetary assembly about the NSOP progress. And he she will need to attend meetings of other relevant networks and events. And finally, advocate for the mobilization of resources to execute NSOP work plan, as well as the establishment and consolidation of the global soil pollution observatory. Here's the note that the term of the chair person vice chair person is two years extendable by the NSOP decision to a second term. On the other hand, we have three potential candidates whom I would like to give the floor for each to give an introduction and motivation why they would like to be a chair slash vice chair of the NSOP. I would like to remind all candidates that they will have two minutes, unfortunately, no longer because we're already out of time. So, with this in mind, I would like to first introduce Dr. day who who will have two minutes now to present himself and give a motivation one to sentences of why he needs to be the chair or vice chair of the NSOP. So, Dr. who the floors is yours please. Oh, thank you, Serge. Okay, hear me. Yes, we can. Okay, great. Good morning. Good afternoon and good evening. Friends and colleagues. I'm day you home. I'm currently the head of soil and groundwater division at the school of environment in China. Tsinghua University is ranked the number nine globally in the environmental science field. We have a very strong solution research group at Tsinghua and hope to build a strong collaboration with more organizations and the research institutes. Next, I want to introduce myself a little bit. I have graduated from Tsinghua University with a bachelor degree from Stanford University with a mass degree and from the University of Cambridge with a PhD degree. I have worked as a soil remediation engineer in the United States for 10 years, and have worked as a faculty member at Tsinghua University for over six years. I've published over 160 SCI journal papers, including first also and corresponding also papers in top journals, such as the nature science nature climate change and the nature sustainability. I was recognized as a global highly studied researcher in 2021. Currently, I'm also serving as the editor in chief for the international journal soil use and management. In recent years, I'm working hard to promote international communication and collaboration. I'm committed to organize an annual international conference series on soil remediation in 2018. In 2019, we had nearly 800 participants to the second conference. Currently, the conference series is on hold due to the pandemic, but we plan to carry on in the near future. I've also worked on two FAO technical documents in collaboration with thousands of international soil pollution experts. One document is the technical guideline on soil pollution assessment for which I served as the chapter chair for mapping soil pollution. The other document is techniques and technologies for the remediation and the management of polluted soils for which I served as the chapter chair for sustainable remediation. I'm very glad that FAO is launching the international network on soil pollution. I'm sure we could all make a great use of this platform to strengthen global collaboration and the knowledge sharing in soil pollution prevention and restoration. Personally, I hope that I could use both my academic experiences and practical experiences to serve this community, to strengthen ties between researchers and practitioners and policymakers, and also to strengthen ties between the community in China and the rest of the world. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Thank you very much doctor who for time. You were actually on two minutes so that's perfect. Thank you very much for the introduction. Pleasure to meet with you and let's first before vote let's hear other potential candidates for position. The next speaker will be Dr. Parth Pratim Chakravarty. Dr. Pratim you have your 10 two minutes for introduction and motivation and the floor is yours please thank you. Thank you. Dr. Parth your connection is not very stable. Yes. Now. Yes, it's better. Yes. Dr. Parth Pratim Chakravarty I am the professor at OCR in the postgraduate department of Zoology and Normal Zoology College. My research experience is 35 years, my thought field of research is soil ecology and soil toxicology. And I have got a lot of work like a lot of the National Academy of Sciences and as a member of the National Academy of Sciences, my specific area of research is the effect of pesticide and heavy metal pollution, soil inhibiting, ecologically beneficial soil micro and metaphone under both soil and laboratory conditions. By the condition of pesticide pollution in soil using that content of bacteria, and you know the policy and policy is also responsible for soil pollution. I'm also working with a particular field using the bacteria obtained from the back of. I am also working with a field of bio monitoring using some selected species of chemicals. That is one of the important things in soil. And as well as I am always conducting the wireless program with the farmers, the local farmers to encourage them to use the highly persistent pesticide not made of anything. At present, I have an international collaboration with the professor of the University of Japan, especially on soil bioregiation in India. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Parthiparthiam for respecting the time. Thank you very much. And last candidate will be Professor Ravi Nayidu who already gave us the talk early during this webinar. Professor Ravi Nayidu would you like to present yourself and stating the motivation for a position that you have applied within two minutes please thank you the floors is yours. I'm afraid you're muted Professor Nayidu you're muted. Thank you very much. I just I'm delighted to present to you about about myself. It's about 1030 p.m. here so I'll be a little bit slow. First and foremost, what I bring to Tinsop is not just being globally recognized scientists, but my ability to connect bring together different groups of people be able to collaborate. And in doing so, being able to diffuse science and training to researchers and environmental practitioners beyond where I'm working. It's just focusing on science alone. I've published more than 750 journal papers. I have been the highly cited researchers since 2020. But I'll also just recently global research.com has ranked me as the number one environmental scientist in Australia and ranked number 59 globally and that brings my science to you. And from from collaboration perspective I have been very, very active having worked for 30 years in this field, being chair, commissioner chair of commission 3.5 International Union of Seoul Congress and so affiliate 3.5 that are led for 88 years. And when I first came to start working on contaminants in 1996 nobody believed that there was contamination issues are are organized the very first contendance conference soil contamination Australia Pacific and let one that led to a network of soil contamination researchers in the Asia Pacific region and launch that in India as a node and they're still a node if of Indian soil contendance research over there. And the node of CRC care is now also in Malaysia that we are launching and we have ran run workshops in a number of countries in the Asia region as well but to do all of that one has to be able to raise funds and I have raised nearly $260 million in my career, not only for research, but also to train researchers and environmental practitioners from Southeast Asia Pacific region how did I manage to do that, because I have been able to bring to Australia to India to China to Indonesia practitioners from all over the world. I didn't have to pay them that came with me to help me do this work. So what I see now going forward is that one for us to be able to make certain that we are able to train to clean up the environment prevent further contamination. We should be able to build capacity that I think is a primary requisite and unless we do that particularly not in US or in Europe because there are many trained people, but in the regions like Africa for instance. Let America for instance, and also Asia Pacific region I'm very very focused on that and to do that we need to build expertise from from Europe and also from from USA. So what I'm bringing to this position, not just my capacity as a scientist who recognizes different soil types who recognizes different contaminants I've worked across in organic and organic content contaminants, but also the ability to connect and be and through connection be able to raise funds as well to train, train our researchers and also practitioners. So, so with that, I would also like to just conclude by saying that did work with FIO, and we'll let the South East Asia region soil pollution report as well. I am a fellow of New Zealand Academy of Science, a foreign fellow of Indian Academy of Agricultural Science and I'm also a fellow of Australian Academy of Science, and technology engineering, along with fellows of a number of societies as well. Thank you very much. I'm sorry for interrupting you just time frame including with that. Thank you very much, Professor Naidu. Thank you very much to Dr. Hu and Dr. Pratim for your introduction and motivation. I hope that all participants are heard background and motivation of all three candidates, and now would like to open the floor for elections for both chair and vice chair. And a poll that you will see on the screens in one second will be the election of a chair. Please, once you see them, please vote for one of the candidates, Professor Ravi Naidu, Dr. Pratim Chakravati, or Dr. Dehu for a chair position. Okay, we're more than 40% participants, please vote if you haven't voted yet. Okay, last 15 seconds to vote. Okay, Natalia Isabel, we can end the poll and share the results. Well, Professor Ravi Naidu, congratulations for joining us and becoming a chair of an INSOP, International Agricultural Pollution. It's a pleasure. And I hope that we will collaborate and make the difference and reduce and achieve zero pollution goal. Thank you very much, Professor Naidu. The next poll that will appear in your screen in a second will be the election of a vice chair. Since we also have three candidates, are the same candidates, I think we can consider the second candidate as the vice chair. Alright, so for the vice chair, if you can see the results, 24% of the votes for Dr. Dehu. So Dr. Dehu, my congratulations for becoming a vice chair of an INSOP network, together with the team, Professor Ravi Naidu and the entire community on soil pollution, we're sure we're going to collaborate a lot and make the difference. Professor, Dr. Parthir Pratim Chakravati, we thank you very much for your speech, for sharing your knowledge dots and I'm sure you will be available partner of INSOP network and that your skills and knowledge will help us a lot to combat the soil pollution. Thank you very much for all participants and once more congratulations to Professor Naidu and Dr. Hu for the becoming part of the INSOP. And well that's it for this part of presentation, so that was nice and quick. We've discussed all pillars of areas of work that I would like to work on. We have the new areas of work that we will include into INSOP and that is soil and water relationship as well as the food quality and food security and soil pollution, how that changes with increasing pollution inside. We also have now our team established a chair and vice chair. So thank you very much for your attention. The next part of our agenda will be to discuss more tasks I promised you Natalia in her presentation, she will go through different tasks that are allocated for different areas of work that I've just discussed. And there we also have some polls and interaction for you to decide if you would like to see other tasks or activities to be included as part of the INSOP. So with that Natalia, I give the floor to you and you can share the screen. Thank you so much Serge. Well, actually I think since we are really late, we can skip this also because we have learned a lot today from the different networks. We have now new ideas. We have a chair and a vice chair that are also very knowledgeable. So I'm sure we can discuss internally on these activities and the new areas of work of the International Network on Soil Pollution. We will soon organize things specifically for all of the areas of work where we can discuss in more detail, more interactively, the activities we really want to work on. So we will inform all of you, all the people that have joined the network on the next meetings that we will organize in order to start working together to define priorities and defined activities. So with this, I think we can move to the next item of the agenda and give the floor to the glossolan chair to present possible synergies between glossolan and INSOP. Thank you so much. Thank you Natalia, indeed I agree that it's already too late, especially in Australia for Professor Naidu and for the rest of the team, it's Friday, even could be coming so it is the first meeting but definitely not the last so we'll discuss those activities next time so for surely everybody can be informed. So with this, as I said, glossolan is one of the networks of GSB with whom we're going to collaborate very closely. Her chair, Miss Miriam Ostinelli will share her presentation and explain us what the glossolan is all about and how we can collaborate together. So Miss Miriam, the floor is yours. Thank you. It's 10 minutes presentation. So, thank you. Thank you. Can you see my screen. Yes. Thanks. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening depending on where you are. First of all, it is a pleasure to attend this meeting and contribute to thinking about different possibilities to strengthen the work for the care of our soils. As we discussed previously, INSOC will focus on these four main areas of work to achieve the network's mission and goals in the framework of the first one, assessment of soil pollution, which will focus on the harmonization of underoperating procedures and reference values for soil contaminants is where we can build the main cooperation between glossolan and INSOC. As mentioned in the slide, glossolan has more than 800 registered labs around the world. To better understand how we work, I have included this diagram showing how our network is organized at different levels, global, regional and national levels. As you can see, at the global level, we have the support of the steering committee, which provides its support to define the priorities and actions that are going to be developed and also to monitor its evolution. We also have the support of a technical committee that takes care of the technical aspects and that works in collaboration with the working groups. These working groups are the ones who carry out the harmonization of the protocols, the technical committee also supports the trainers. This global level structure works in close communication with glossolan spec and with INFO. In addition, it communicates with regional networks. These seven regional networks work in communication with the global level and at the same time help organize and support the work of the national networks in each region. Finally, at the base of the pyramid are the labs that make up the national network. In each country, we have one reference laboratory which has the mission of forming the national network. These reference laboratories are the link between the regional and global level and the rest of the laboratories. To understand how and why the cooperation between INFO and glossolan could be so, I would like to show very briefly what we are doing. Glossolan was established in 2013 to harmonize soil laboratories methods and data and to build the capacity of laboratories in soil analysis. One of the main activities is harmonization of standard operating procedures. We have published various SOPs on methods that allow general characterization of soil, pH, electrical conductivity, different methods to analyze phosphorus, nitrogen, organic carbon. And at this time we are working on other methods for physical and biological soil analysis. We have also begun to work on soil contaminants. We are working on harmonization of the SOPs that I mentioned there. We have also started drafting some technical documents and collecting information on regulation for importing soil samples. This information is incorporated into our database, simple and used, for example, when organizing cities. There are other areas in which we are working hard to develop the capacities of the laboratories in our network. For example, in training to provide regular training to the labs on all those topics. And in 2021 we have 17 webinars given by 26 trainers from 16 different countries as the slide said. In addition to training at Glossoland, we are working on organizing global and regional proficiency tests to assess SOPs and also to help laboratories with external quality control. But as it said on the slide, Glossoland has only a few experts on soil pollution. So, as done with other networks, INFA, INSAS, Glossoland's Tech, or NETSOP, we would like to initiate a collaboration with INSOP. The proposal is established showing Glossoland INSOP working group. The task could be to propose SOPs for Glossoland to harmonize, considering the needs and priorities coming from the different regions, from the CSP or from INSOP. To motivate laboratories to analyze soil contaminants to show in Glossoland, prepare soil contamination, awareness, raising materials, as well as technical materials, including guidelines on the collection, storage and transportation of soil samples, promote the establishment of new laboratories, get projects and procure equipment to existing laboratories in need, provide training on the analysis of soil contaminants and support and advise laboratories as needed, and develop guidelines for the management and disposal of soil laboratory worst. Now, to think about the cooperation between INSOP and Glossoland to develop SOPs for soil contaminants, I think we have to take into account some aspects that can facilitate cooperation. And others that will surely have to be resolved. For example, as I said, many of the laboratories and people who work in Glossoland have experienced in agricultural soils, although some also have experienced in political soil, they are not the majority. Therefore, the perspective of those who are part of INSOP will be essential to define the methods to be harmonized. We will also have to consider that the objectives of the analysis may be different. This will lead us to work with analytes of different types, and surely we would also need to work with different levels of this analysis. So, as you can imagine, all these inside the procedures and the protocols. Therefore, we must consider to handling and preparation of soil samples, the extraction, the cleaning of the sample, the working rounds and limit of detection and quantification, as well as the equipment and material, the necessary control and the management of the laboratory. Well, as I said, we will have to consider all these, but despite how young Glossoland is, we have a great experience in this work, and I think that the synergy between both networks will be very important, because we will contribute our experience, but we will also gain new knowledge and more experience by working with different matrices, and our lab will be enriched by the expertise of INSOP members. So, in short, we are going to find difference in the work areas, but we can start working on those aspects that we have in common, and from there move forward according to the needs and possibilities. Finally, how to work? I think we should establish a work schedule, assessing the main problems or threats that are identified. The party is interested in the work and the experience and analytical capabilities above level, discuss challenges and needs, and explore financial resources, mobilization opportunities, and based on this information, define work priorities and goals, and define a specific work agenda with activities, dates, responsible for each work, and products. Thank you for your attention. Miriam, thank you very much for your presentation and explaining to us the work Glossoland is working specifically on the procedure on SOP, the interaction and our collaboration future, and sharing with us this map on National Soil Lab Network, which was quite impressive. Thank you very much. As was mentioned before, on mapping, we're going to collaborate very closely with another GSP network called INSI, which stands for International Network of Soil Information Institutes. And his chair, Mr. Luca Montanarella, will explain us more about the INSI work and the future collaboration between INSOP and INSI. Mr. Luca Montanarella, the floor is yours, 10 minutes, thank you. Yes, thanks a lot for the introduction. And I hope that you see my screen, I don't know. Yes, we can. Oh, great. So, can you thank you for the invitation to join you in this meeting. As you said, I'm here in my capacity as being the current chair of the International Network of Soil Information Institutions. And we'll briefly introduce to you what we do and also how we can collaborate. I personally work at the European Commission, but in this case I will talk only about what we do in this network. So, concerning the international, the topic of this very short presentation, it will be looking to two things, essentially to how we approach the collection of global data about certain topics. In this case about soil pollution. In the second one, maybe a few words about gaps and opportunities to map soil pollution. So the International Network of Soil Information Institutions is a network of the global soil partnership which puts together all the national institutions that provide soil data. And so the main task is of this network is then to combine the national data sets into products into global representations of certain properties of soils or certain soil conditions. And I take you just the latest example to explain the process from the collection of data about salt, salt affected soils. It's a process which is a two way process between the national institutions that provide data and the global soil partnership secretary that is actually then feeding the data into a global system. And complementing eventually the missing data from the national level with available other data at global scale or at regional scale. So it's a two way process where the main actors are of course the national soil data providers that are represented within the network in C. Obviously the global soil partnership secretariat based in a field in Rome, which is doing the bulk of the work and is compiling the data then in in in these very prominently known global soil maps of different properties for example, like salt affected soils or soil erosion or carbon, and hopefully also in the future maybe about soil pollution. Now if we talk about so pollution things I'm afraid will be a little bit more complicated than that, because so pollution probably has been already mentioned several times is a more complex issue related to different human activities. The main distinction at least we in Europe do this main distinction is between local point pollution so contaminated sites, and we know that there are plenty of heavily contaminated sites in Europe but also in many parts of the world, and then the diffuse pollution process that is linked to many other factors, atmospheric deposition, agricultural practices or kind of practices or human activities that cause diffuse soil pollution. So mapping them or collecting data about these two types of pollution is in my view one of the major future challenge of this network. And honestly, I'm very very keen to collaborate especially with the new chair of the network to defies together a strategy on how to compile harmonized and policy relevant data across the various countries in the world on pollution at local and diffuse level. So just to give an example we in Europe collect of course diffuse soil pollution data on many parameters for example on heavy metals like in this case. But you can collect them on many other important parameters. And doing this at global scale will be a challenge but I'm sure we'll get there as we did already for other parameters that we have already met. So thanks a lot for the invitation and I'm more than happy to contribute to the future work of this network, and also device strategy on how to collect global scale soil pollution data for for future users. Thank you very much. Mr. Monterello thank you very much for presentation emphasizing your tasks and actually explain the process of how to do this mapping. I'm sure that yes you said that the gaps and constraints that we're going to face into a pollution and much more complex but together. Thank you. And last presentation will be given by vice chair of another network that we would like to collaborate closely special area of remediation. This is a network designed by diversity, which will help us a lot in our fourth area of work. It will be given by miss Rosalina Gonzalez, a vice chair of the Netsop Rosalina. The floor is yours you have 10 minutes to explain what the Netsop is doing and how we can collaborate together in the new network. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much. Could you hear me. Yes, very well thank you. Today I'm going to talk to you about the international network of soil biodiversity that is Netsop. The idea is to collaborate with this network because generally we see the effects of soil pollution into the soil biodiversity. So it's very important to work together. We launched the network last year and third December 3. We had 80, 800 participants from around the world. We have defined key activities with selected the vice chairs of different groups I'm going to show you and the idea is to provide critical mass for the implementation of coordination of the global soil biodiversity observatory to provide reliable evidence to support better decision making on this important topic. And we want to strengthen the knowledge about soil biodiversity because we talked last year only a few amount of soil biodiversity is known around the world. We want to contribute to develop internationally accepted biological indicators because this is another challenge that we have a we want to monitoring of soil biodiversity status and loss. In addition to increase the sustainable use of solar diversity and overall soil health and contributes to the adoption of good practices that has availability and safety vote. So we have four technical working groups. The first one is is the measurement is working to measurement assessment and monitoring of soil biodiversity. The working group to is working on sustainable use and management and conservation of soil biodiversity. Number three is related to economics of soil biodiversity that is very important for us. Number four is the policies and legal instruments related to soil biodiversity because we found that is in most of countries, we don't have relation about soil biodiversity. We are working in different areas. One of this is the promote the standard operation procedures to harmonize this the procedures to determine to analyze soil biodiversity lead the harmonization process in this area. The capacity of soil laboratories and soil biological analysis and raise the awareness of the importance of the determination of soil biological parameters in our network we have really divided the men and women in into the people that are interested in this area and is very interesting as mostly and mostly from Europe, Asia and Latin America. We have our partners as a chair we have Mr. Peter the reader from university of for white meaning university of Netherlands. We have our coordinator that is Rosa, Rosa's son and apology, because she had medical issue and she couldn't stay today, but she's our leader and we are working with her. We have from the working world. Number one, as a vice chair, George Brown from Brazil and Carlos Guerra as a vice chair from Germany, we have from working world to to solely so he leaned from Western University of Canada, and vice chair, Jeff, but to get it from University of Alberta. From working to number three, we have a John Luca, but now as the vice chair, and Julia, my, my Lord, you excuse excuses, I, I, I send excuse if I don't pronounce, if I cannot pronounce very well by share from number one, number four, my Rosalina Gonzalez and look how my partner from the last presentation as my vice chair. We have a special advisor from then a wall from the United States and Rosa approach from the itps. So, 910 members today, and we are dividing in the first two groups, and more or less the 80% of people are working on them that are related to measurement measurements and management of soil biodiversity and the more or less 20% and dividing into the number group number three economics and policies and number four. We have our link to, if you are one of you want to participate in this group, and we will send the link to, to join us. Now, now we are working in addition to development guidelines for measuring assessment and monitoring development of field manual on soil biodiversity development methodology for the economic valuation and performance and assessment of effective policies and legal instruments. We have potential initiatives that include soil organisms, organisms in risk assessment approach and the toxicological studies. We want to work on the online database best available techniques for managing and remedying polluted soils include natural based solution and develop national capacities and training technology transfer for the sustainable and management of polluted soils. So the idea is to work together. It's a great opportunity. And I think that is necessary to work with the important network. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Rosalina for this presentation and sharing your objectives challenges that you're facing as well as the possible synergies are going to work together. It's going to be a mutual benefit for each other we're going to reduce soil pollution and that's going to increase sustainability of soil biodiversity in the future by overcoming those challenges together. Thank you very much. Well in that sense, I would like to conclude this part of agenda presentations from all speakers like to thanks to all speakers for sharing their thoughts knowledge and experience with the entire world with all the attendees. In that sense. Happy to launch the new network of insop. I'm sure we're going to overcome all the challenges in the future going to face. I would like to give floor for a final closing sentence to our new chair. Professor of you know you do as part of the agenda to give the final remarks on the insop and they are vision. Thank you. Professor you do you have to unmute your microphone so we can hear you. Thank you very much. It's 11pm descent here and so I'll be short. Very brief. I would like to acknowledge the outstanding effort that FAO, particularly Natalia and the team has put in place to get together. All of us to launch insop that again recognizes the challenges that we are confronted with them from environmental pollution perspective. Elected as chair of insop I can assure you that I will do my utmost to make certain that environmental contamination pollution is no less than than what we see as climate change. And that takes me to the to the 2009 nature publication in which they identified 10 planetary boundaries of which they said chemical pollution is one which is significant and nothing less than climate climate change. The difference is climate change is infrastructure as they could be drought for example famine things that we can see whereas with contamination. We don't see things until such time you are struck really hard and then and then it's a very painful death and therefore visibility of this is important and the insop network that I have our work with the network to make certain that we enhance visibility. Today in the presentation that we have had, we had in the presentation that so legacy that we must not leave for future generations. We had in our presentation is not just soil, it's also about water, and also air, and hence it is about critical critical zone to deliver all of these things, merely by us getting together would take us leave several steps forward, but we also need resources, resources to train resources to build capacity. And that is something which I would like a team that I work with to be able to do by connecting and connecting to see how we can raise resources such that we can train. Early career researchers also enhance environment sustainability of the environment, what it means from food security perspective from primary school to high school to the university. No matter what it takes we got to do we got to do that. So today's presentation has also brought up to me that they're quite a number of networks. Some of these are local, and some of them go beyond being local. Nicole is one example, for example, it's also in Latin America. So the question is how can we bring the networks together. How can we do that such that we can collectively harvest the skill set that we have expertise that we have to take it to those countries that need the expertise. So with that, so just in Natalia, I want to give my full commitment, and we have I see 439 participants, and I would like to work with each one of them in some form to see how we can leave our planet in a much cleaner state for future generation. Thank you. Thank you, Professor Naidu. Once again, thank you to all participants, attendees, it was a very fruitful informative discussion of past three years of past three hours, I'm sorry. I hope we all learned a lot about the extent of problem that we're facing inside pollution and the challenges that we have to overcome we don't have any other options but just to address them and unite together all the networks and eliminate pollution as soon as possible, as long as not too late. Thank you very much all the presentations and this webinar was recorded. So everything will be shared online very soon. If you have any questions would do apologize that we still have some questions unanswered. If you have any other questions, please drop us an email to auto myself and I tell you, all details are available at in so website in so far. And we will address your questions as soon as possible so nothing will be unanswered. Thank you very much. If you have any other remarks. Please raise them now otherwise I would like to wish you a very good weekend and have a nice rest of the day and the evening. Thank you. Bye bye everybody. Thank you to everyone. Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you to the organizer. Congratulations to the chairs. Thank you.