By 2050, two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities, making soils the foundation for their sustainable development. For this reason, the 2025 theme is “Healthy Soils for Healthy Cities” (the link is in Russian), focusing on issues related to soil sealing and urbanization.

On 4 December, the FAO Liaison Office with the Russian Federation, Lomonosov Moscow State University, and PhosAgro, together with the Dokuchaev Soil Science Society, the Russian State Agrarian University – Moscow Timiryazev Agricultural Academy, and other partner organizations, marked World Soil Day 2025 at the Soil Science Faculty of Lomonosov Moscow State University.

The forum aimed to exchange experience and knowledge and strengthen cooperation among scientists, government representatives, the agricultural business, and non-profit organizations to advance soil research and address practical challenges.

The five-hour conference was moderated by Pavel Krasilnikov, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), Acting Dean of the Faculty of Soil Science at MSU, and Ivan Vasenev, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor at the Ecology Department of the Russian State Agrarian University – Moscow Timiryazev Agricultural Academy.

Before the forum began, a video message from FAO Director-General Dr Qu Dongyu was shown.

“We live in a big city, drive cars, use public transport, walk on asphalt roads. We feel comfortable. Sometimes we forget the need to find a golden mean between this comfort and preserving the environment,” said Igor Bochkov, Deputy Vice-Rector for International Cooperation at Lomonosov Moscow State University, in his welcome address. “Today’s event will once again draw attention to the fact that it is the soil, seemingly belonging to everyone and no one at the same time, covered with vegetation rather than sealed in asphalt and concrete, that allows for absorbing rainwater, improving air quality, and reducing temperatures.”

As part of the forum, PhosAgro was solemnly presented with an FAO Technical Excellence Certificate. The honourary award was presented to Alexander Gilgenberg, CEO of PhosAgro, by Oleg Kobiakov, Director of the FAO Liaison Office with the Russian Federation.

“From the very beginning, FAO’s activities have been based on a scientific foundation. Over the past 80 years, our position as a knowledge organization, a platform for data analysis and synthesis, as well as for generously sharing what was once called ‘advanced practices’ and is now called ‘best practices’, this scientific foundation has been further strengthened,” noted Oleg Kobiakov in his speech.

“This year, on the initiative of our Director-General Dr Qu Dongyu, who holds two diplomas in agriculture and shows great interest in innovation, technical excellence certificate competitions were held for the first time in six categories,” continued the head of the FAO Moscow office. “In the category ‘Management of Soil and Water Resources for Increasing Agricultural Sustainability and Ensuring Food Security’, over 300 applications were received. From these, 38 winners were selected.

Among government institutions and organizations, the only private company is PhosAgro from the Russian Federation. This is evidence of the significant contribution PhosAgro makes to the development of international cooperation programmes under the auspices of FAO.”

Over the past five years, the company has allocated over $5 million for FAO technical programme needs. This amount has enabled thousands of farmers in various corners of the world to be supplied, for example, with ‘Soil Doctor’ kits, which allow them to determine the fertility of their land and the need for organic and inorganic fertilizers.

PhosAgro also maintains high standards of international cooperation within the framework of the Global Soil Partnership, including the Eurasian Soil Partnership, whose secretariat is based at the Faculty of Soil Science of MSU.

Conference moderator Pavel Krasilnikov reminded the audience that World Soil Day is celebrated on 5 December in honour of the birthday of King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand, who was one of the main proponents of protecting global soil resources and made a significant contribution to soil science development. After that, the floor was given for a welcome address to Ms Ratchanok Sangpenchan, Minister-Counsellor at the Embassy of the Kingdom of Thailand in Moscow.

“Bangkok is situated on deep layers of soft clay, making the city particularly susceptible to land slumping. Uneven roads, deformed pipelines, and building stress reflect this vulnerability,” shared Dr Ratchanok Sangpenchan.

“At the same time, rapid urbanization has led to the sealing of large part of the city’s surface. During periods of heavy rainfall, the soil cannot perform its natural function of absorbing and regulating water, leading to sudden surface flooding even in areas with measures of protection against flooding.”

“Thailand has drawn several key lessons from the characteristics of the country’s soil cover,” summarized Ms Sangpenchan. “First of all, soils represent ‘invisible infrastructure’ that supports urban stability and safety. Moreover, urban planning must incorporate soil studies. Thailand applies soil-based solutions, including designing sponge cities, unsealing impermeable surfaces, restoring wetland functions, and expanding green spaces in the city. Finaly, when soils are restored, cities are revived.”

On behalf of Lifeng Li, Director of the FAO Land and Water Division, Thorunn Petursdottir, Senior Officer of the Division and Secretary of the Global Soil Partnership, delivered a speech.

The FAO expert noted that “a significant portion of future urban growth will occur on highly protected arable lands. This is particularly relevant for the Russian Federation, which is home to the world’s largest area of chernozem (black soils). Conserving these specially protected lands through integrated land use and urban planning, urban growth boundaries, compact city growth, and integrating agrifood systems is essential for safeguarding soils, ensuring food supplies, and building resilient cities.

“It is of utmost importance to incorporate soil protection and sustainable soil management issues into land-use planning and climate and biodiversity strategies. FAO actively promotes this approach within the Global Soil Partnership.

Soil conservation is not a task for institutions alone. Cities and their residents also play a key role. Measures such as unsealing paved surfaces, expanding permeable coverings, creating green roofs and ecosystem-based solutions, promoting urban and peri-urban agriculture, and ensuring the circular use of organic residues can significantly enhance urban resilience and contribute to sustainable food systems.

The FAO ‘Green Cities’ initiative aims to rethink how cities feed people, manage land and water resources, and foster healthier and more sustainable communities.”

Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor Elvira Dovletyarova, Director of the Agrarian and Technological Institute (ATI) at the Patrice Lumumba Russian University of Peoples’ Friendship (RUDN University), spoke about “RUDN’s Research Experience and Activities” and, in particular, shared information about the Soil and Ecological Laboratory (SEL) of the ATI at RUDN University.

The laboratory is equipped with modern equipment for conducting field and laboratory studies of urban ecosystems; it employs over 100 methodologies for analyzing soils, water, greenhouse substrates, and sediments; and it aggregates experience from work in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don, Murmansk, and other cities. In 2022, SEL joined the Russian soil laboratory network, RUSOLAN, which is part of the international GLOSOLAN network.

ATI specialists conduct a wide range of research, including soil mapping, analysis of soil ecological quality and agrochemical parameters, as well as water quality analysis (groundwater, reservoir water, drinking water). They employ a combined approach using remote sensing, high-precision topographic surveying (Differential GPS), and rapid screening of heavy metal concentrations (portable X-Ray Fluorescence).

ATI hosts the summer school “3MUGIS” – an event dedicated to studying the environmental, anthropogenic, and social processes of urbanization and their impact on soil functions.

To explain why urban agriculture is so important, Ming Hung Wong, Professor in the Department of Science and Environmental Studies at The Education University of Hong Kong, cited the following statistics:

• over half of the world’s population lives in cities, and 800 million people are engaged in urban agriculture to feed their families;
• there are already over 30 megapolises worldwide with populations exceeding 10 million;
• to feed a city of this size, at least 6,000 tonnes of food must be brought in daily.

Among the key conclusions drawn by Dr Wong, two particular points stand out. First of all, “the clean and safe processing of organic waste requires source separation, enhanced treatment, and adherence to strict quality standards to prevent contaminants from entering our soils and food chain.”

In the next place, the Chinese expert emphasized, “transforming urban organic waste into resources (e.g., compost, biochar, etc.) is crucial for a ‘circular’ city, where nutrient cycles are closed, environmental impact is reduced, and conditions for a more sustainable urban future are created.”

Dr Jovica Vasin, President of the Serbian Society of Soil Science, spoke about the main processes and problems related to land loss and degradation in Serbia. These include a decline in soil organic matter content, soil compaction resulting from industrial, mining, energy, and transport activities, soil acidification and salinization, soil pollution (industrial pollution, heavy metals, excessive use of agrochemicals, etc.), water and wind erosion, as well as landslides.

Dr Vasin listed measures for conserving soil organic matter, divided into two categories. The first: applying ‘alternative’ organic fertilizers: compost, environmentally-friendly household, settlement, and landfill waste, waste product of earthworms, green manure for restoring fertility, and food industry by-products like molasses. The second category comprises agrotechnical measures. This refers to reducing tillage intensity, as microorganism activity enhances soil aeration and accelerates the decomposition of organic matter.

Professor Aminat Umarova, Head of the Department of Soil Physics and Reclamation at the Soil Science Faculty, Lomonosov Moscow State University, in her presentation “Artificial Soils in the City: Past, Present, Future,” outlined the features of urban soils.

These features include high variability of the soil cover due to human activity: construction of urban facilities, landscaping works, and others; periodic alteration of the topsoil layer, which complicates the study of urban soil properties over time, necessary for understanding mechanisms and assessing the rates of ongoing processes; and synlithogenic soil formation – formation under constant or periodic input of solid material onto the surface, resulting in periodic layering of technogenic soils.

The functions of the soil cover in the city are also diverse: recreational, sanitary, buffering, barrier, environment-forming, etc. This, noted Professor Umarova, explains the “demand for purpose-designed soil constructions.”

“Ecological monitoring with analysis of ecosystem service indicators of ‘healthy’ soils in the conditions of the urban forest park of Timiryazev Academy” was the topic of the presentation by Ivan Vasenev, Professor at the Department of Ecology of the Russian State Agrarian University – Moscow Timiryazev Agricultural Academy. His presentation included images of the background cultivated soddy-podzolic soil and a transect with technogenically disturbed gleyic humus-podzolic soils on the territory of the Ecological Research Station of the Timiryazev Academy.

Ecological monitoring, explained Professor Vasenev, is “a system of specially organized observations in time and space over the main components of ecosystems (soils, biota, surface and ground waters, air) aimed at developing recommendations for ecological optimization of their use, conservation, and/or restoration – while minimizing environmental risks and preserving the main ecological functions and services of the basic landscape components.”

Lyudmila Orlova, President of the “National Conservation Agriculture Movement,” dedicated her speech to conservation agriculture as a strategy for sustainable development of rural and urban areas. She noted, in particular, that:

• over 100 million hectares of agricultural land are subject to degradation, including desertification (RAS, 2025);
• desertification has affected over 50 million hectares, especially in Kalmykia, Astrakhan Oblast, Stavropol Krai, and Dagestan (FAO, 2019);
• soil erosion leads to the annual loss of 1.5 billion tonnes of fertile topsoil (Dokuchaev Soil Science Institute).

“Violation of soil conservation technologies leads to land degradation and water pollution – both in agriculture and in the urban environment,” continued Lyudmila Orlova. Among the problems she listed are the wash-off of agrochemicals (fertilizers, pesticides) from fields during water erosion and the deposition of dust with sorbed agrochemicals onto water surfaces during dust storms, which leads to water quality deterioration. Sealed soils do not filter runoff, resulting in pollutants (heavy metals, petroleum products) entering water bodies directly.

Consequently, “all this together causes eutrophication (algal blooms) of water bodies, the death of aquatic ecosystems, and makes water unfit for drinking without complex purification.”

Conservation agriculture (CA), firstly, helps prevent soil compaction, erosion, degradation, and desertification. The cost savings from avoiding soil degradation restoration exceed 1 million roubles per hectare – about 20 trillion roubles for 19.5 million hectares.

Secondly, it offers the potential to preserve and restore soil carbon (from 1.5 to 5 tonnes/ha per year, up to 325 million tonnes per year on the grain and oilseed crop area of 65 million hectares). Thirdly, it reduces greenhouse gas emissions (about 30 kg per hectare per year, about 1.95 million tonnes per year on the grain and oilseed crop area of 65 million hectares).

Furthermore, emphasized Lyudmila Orlova, CA allows for increasing soil productivity (yield growth by 20–30%); increasing profitability by 10–20%; providing additional income for agricultural producers through the sale of carbon units – from 700 roubles per tonne, averaging about 1,400 roubles/ha, 91 billion roubles on Russia’s grain and oilseed crop area; and caring for soil health by creating favourable conditions for soil biota.

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Other speakers at the forum at MSU included: Natalya Zhigunova, Acting Head of the Economic Monitoring Department of the Committee for Nature Use, Environmental Protection and Ecological Safety of St. Petersburg; Tatiana Prokofeva, Associate Professor at the Department of Soil Geography, Soil Science Faculty, Lomonosov Moscow State University; Professor Ganlin Zhang, Director of the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology; Vyacheslav Vasenev, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor, Department of Landscape Design and Sustainable Ecosystems, Agrarian and Technological Institute (RUDN University); Natalya Kosheleva, Professor at the Geography Faculty, MSU; Olga Semenyuk, Senior Research Fellow at the Department of General Soil Science, Lomonosov Moscow State University; Natalia Rodriguez Eugenio, Expert of the Land and Water Division, FAO; Evgeny Vaulin, Head of the Climate Project Development Department at the Russian Agrochemical Service; Vladimir Romanenkov, Head of the Department of Agrochemistry and Plant Biochemistry, Soil Science Faculty, Lomonosov Moscow State University; Evgeny Panin, Deputy Director-General of Kontur; Sergey Samosyuk, Corporate Secretary of PhosAgro; Daria Goryachkina, Director of Operational Risks and Sustainable Development at Kept.

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The full video recording of the conference is available at the link.

Presentation materials from the speakers can be accessed here (no password required, no time limit for storage).

BACKGROUND

Urban soils perform vital ecosystem functions: they enable food production, filter water, sequester carbon, regulate temperature, and support biodiversity. However, soil sealing, pollution, and urban sprawl threaten these benefits, increasing flood risks, intensifying heat islands, and endangering food production in peri-urban areas.

Solutions exist. Unsealing covered soils, green roofs, ecologically sound landscaping and urban agriculture projects, composting, and sustainable urban planning can turn soil into an effective tool for enhancing climate action, improving quality of life and public health, reducing disaster risk, and developing more inclusive and greener cities.

World Soil Day 2025 is a call to action. It urges policymakers, scientists, urban leaders, civil society, and citizens worldwide to rethink urban spaces through soil, so people and nature can thrive together in healthy green cities.

A cross-cutting theme for all World Soil Day events is the preservation and improvement of soil health and the sequestration of atmospheric carbon, which simultaneously leads to the accumulation of soil humus and increased soil fertility. Therefore, an important topic of the meeting was the discussion of the RECSOIL programme project, which is being implemented in the Russian Federation by PhosAgro with scientific and methodological support from Moscow State University.