The 2025 theme, “Healthy Soils for Healthy Cities,” shines a spotlight on the often-overlooked yet critical role that soils play in shaping the livability, sustainability, and resilience of our urban environments.

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As cities continue to expand, urbanisation brings with it a series of challenges—soil sealing, reduced green spaces, increased pollution, rising temperatures, and pressure on local food systems. When soil is sealed under concrete and asphalt, it loses its natural ability to absorb water, store carbon, support plant life, or regulate microclimates. Over time, this contributes to flash floods, heat islands, declining biodiversity, and a heavier environmental footprint.

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World Soil Day 2025 calls on all of us—policymakers, urban planners, researchers, farmers, businesses, local councils, community groups, and citizens—to recognise that soils are the foundation of healthy, thriving cities.

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Healthy urban soils:

• Support local and community-based food production, reducing reliance on external food sources and strengthening food security.

• Filter and purify water, playing a vital role in urban flood mitigation and watershed protection.

• Store carbon, helping cities combat climate change and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

• Regulate temperatures, cooling urban heat islands and improving overall comfort and liveability.

• Sustain biodiversity, creating habitats for insects, microorganisms, and plant species essential to ecosystem balance.

This year’s theme is a call to reimagine the future of our cities from the ground up. It urges us to design urban spaces where soils are protected, restored, and integrated into city planning—through parks, green corridors, nature-based solutions, edible landscapes, regenerative agriculture sites, and community gardens.

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By safeguarding and revitalising urban soils, we are not only nurturing our environment but also investing in healthier communities, stronger local economies, and more climate-resilient cities.

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World Soil Day 2025 invites everyone to stand together in protecting our soil ecosystems—because when soils thrive, cities flourish, communities prosper, and future generations inherit a healthier world.

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