Maintaining healthy soils to meet the food production and food nutrition needs of the growing populations of the world is one of the key guiding principles of the Global Soil Partnership.

The Partnership aims at improving governance of limited soil resources to guarantee healthy and productive soils.

In 2012, FAO and the Ministry of Agriculture of Jordan, agreed to launch the Global Soil Partnership in the Near East and North Africa Region to improve coordination mechanisms and governance of soil across countries that suffer from a structural scarcity of natural resources.

In June this year the partnership met for the first time, taking stock of needs and priorities for the sustainable soil management in the region and efforts need to institutionalise the NENA Soil Partnership.

During the meeting the regional secretariat and the steering committee of the partnership  were established and a roadmap for the implementation of actions at the NENA Soil Partnership was defined.