World Soil Day 2020: Current theme, history and all you need to know

 

World Soil Day is celebrated on 5 December annually. It aims to raise awareness of the importance of maintaining healthy ecosystems and human well-being by addressing the growing challenges in soil management, fighting soil biodiversity loss, increasing soil awareness, and encouraging governments, organizations, communities, and individuals around the world to commit to proactively improving soil health.

World Soil Day also highlights the growing problem due to population expansion. Therefore, it is necessary to take a step to reduce the erosion of soil, to maintain fertility so that food safety can be ensured.

World Soil Day: Theme

The theme for World Soil Day 2020 is “Keep soil alive, protect soil biodiversity”. This years' campaign "Keep soil alive, protect soil biodiversity" urges us to focus our attention on the workers below ground - from tiny bacteria to agile millipedes and slimy earthworms - all of which contribute to processes that are indispensable to life on Earth.

These days biodiversity loss is a worry and the soil is also affected. Soil is home to more than 1/4 of our planet's biodiversity. Yet, we only know 1% of this universe. There are more living creatures in a single teaspoon of healthy soil than there are people on Earth.

World Soil Day: History

In 2002, the International Union of Soil Sciences recommended celebrating World Soil Day annually on 5 December. Also, FAO supported the formal establishment of World Soil Day as a global awareness-raising platform under the leadership of the Kingdom of Thailand and within the framework of the Global Soil Partnership.

The conference of FAO was unanimously endorsed World Soil Day in June 2013 and requested its official adoption at the 68th UN General Assembly. In December 2013, UN General Assembly at the 68th session declared 5 December as World Soil Day. The first World Soil Day was celebrated on 5 December 2014.

Fun facts about soil:

• In just 3 inches of soil, there is 13 quadrillion living organisms, weighing 100 million tonnes.
• One hectare of soil contains the weight equivalent of two cows of bacteria.
• There are more organisms in one gram of healthy soils than there are people on Earth.
• An earthworm can digest its own weight in the soil every 24 hours. 50% of the planet's soil passes through the gut of earthworms each year.
• Soil organisms process25,000 kg of organic matter in a surface area equivalent to a soccer field, which is the weight of 25 cars.