'How healthy this soil is today is how healthy we will be': Sadhguru at Global Landscapes Forum

Speaking on the need for urgent action to restore degraded soil and accelerate the impact of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, Sadhguru, Founder, Isha Foundation delivered his video message at the GLF Bonn Digital Conference 2020 here today

Jun 04, 2020

Speaking on the need for urgent action to restore degraded soil and accelerate the impact of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, Sadhguru, Founder, Isha Foundation delivered his video message at the GLF Bonn Digital Conference 2020 here today. The 4-day conference is the world’s first global digital conference on integrated land use from the new digital broadcasting center of the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) in Bonn, Germany. GLF is the world’s largest knowledge-led platform on sustainable land use.

“For human wellbeing, for health and for food security and above all, for ecological balance, at least 30% of food should come from trees.” Sadhguru said in the video message. He emphasised the need to design large-scale, nature-based solutions that acknowledge the inevitability of human aspiration and find ways to make it less damaging and more friendly to ecological preservation.

Sadhguru said that restoring tree cover is critical to restoring habitats and ecosystems, to reversing biodiversity loss, to bringing back soil health and productivity, and to averting large-scale desertification of our planet. He in particular discussed the pivotal role of tree-based agriculture, or agroforestry, which is powerfully placed to harmonize several priorities, including aligning our ecological aims with our economic ones, and reducing human migrations compelled by loss of agrarian livelihoods.

“We are not different from the land we walk upon. We are just a small outcrop of this earth. How healthy this soil is today is how healthy we will be. It is time we become more conscious of this fundamental relationship. Global Landscapes Forum is doing wonderful work in this direction. I congratulate and truly appreciate the work of everyone involved in GLF. We are with you in this. Let’s make it happen,” Sadhguru said.

The conference which got underway on 2 June featured inspirational talks, interactive sessions and networking platforms to exchange ideas on building more sustainable food systems. The 2020 theme of GLF is “Food and Livelihoods.”

The 4-day digital conference is addressing food security through regenerative agriculture, biodiversity restoration through sustainable farming practices and amplifying youth leadership in climate action among other issues related to ecosystem restoration.

Representatives from leading global ecology bodies such as United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Agroforestry Center and Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) are participating in the digital conference. The effort is to influence global action through policy change to restore degraded lands and redefine land use.

The Mayor of Bonn, President of ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, Mr. Ashok Sridharan was a speaker at an online session on ‘A New Normal’ that focused on urgent need for resilient, nutritious and food secure landscapes in order to achieve transformative change for our planet.

The Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) is a movement that puts communities first in addressing landscape-level issues. With science and traditional knowledge at the core, GLF outreach, events and projects are designed not only to spark dialogue, but also follow-through to impact in addressing some of the most complex and multi-stakeholder problems facing our earth and our communities.

Sadhguru, Founder, Isha Foundation

Ranked amongst the fifty most influential people in India, Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and a New York Times bestselling author. Sadhguru was conferred the "Padma Vibhushan" by the Government of India in 2017, the highest annual civilian award, accorded for exceptional and distinguished service.

Three decades ago, Sadhguru founded Isha Foundation, a non-profit human-service organization, with human well-being as its core commitment. Sadhguru has initiated powerful Inner Engineering programs for human transformation as well as various outreach projects to uplift under-served communities in rural India.