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Regional soil profile to be shared globally

Saturday January 22 2022
Soil analysis

Soil analysis. National soil information systems for Rwanda, Tanzania, and Ethiopia are set for a review under a new project to be led by Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI). PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

By MOHAMMED ISSA
By PAULINE KAIRU

National soil information systems for Rwanda, Tanzania, and Ethiopia are set for a review under a new project to be led by Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI).

The project will identify what soil management approaches have worked, which have not, which new solutions work best and where opportunity exists.

Subsequent information from the three to five-year long soil analysis will also be used to update global data initiatives such as World Soil Information Service soil profile database and the Global Soil Information System, and help support improved evidence-based intervention design for SIS systems co-created with the global soil data community.

It is supported by $1.07 million funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in line with its goal of assessing opportunities for main streaming national soil information service initiatives in Agra countries via FAO’s Global Soil Laboratory Network initiative.

“The results will help us to appreciate how national contexts, and decisions made during their development, affected the success of the various SIS interventions,” said CABI’s director of data policy and practice Martin Parr.

“We want to understand how soil information informs national policies, strategic planning, agronomic management, input supply, etc,” said CABI programme manager, Ruthie Musker.

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Meanwhile, Zanzibar has raised concern over the depletion of sand, blaming contractors and builders for flouting policy.

“The increase in demand for non-renewable natural resources owing to increase in economic and social activities points to the danger of them decreasing,” Zanzibar officials say in the 2021 State of The Archipelago Environment Report, but they also apportion blame on officials that fail to enforce the law.

The archipelago has huge pits that were used for licensed for extraction of the sand that the report also admits that the licenser, the government, is yet to fill to avert catastrophe in Uzi, Cheju and Donge in the rural area.

The report focused on the non-renewables, tourism sector, climate change, water sources, oil and gas, land use, solid and liquid waste within Zanzibar island.

Interestingly, offshore and onshore oil and gas exploration activities in the archipelago have had a minor impact on the environment.

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