60 years old, Paul LUU is an agronomist specialized in tropical agronomy, graduate from AgroParisTech, the Institute of tropical areas and the University of Montpellier (PhD). He began in the field (6 years) in agronomic research projects (St. Lucia, Sri Lanka and Tonga) before joining the international Relationship Department of the French Ministry of agriculture. He was in charge (7 years) of relationship with FAO, the WB and the CGIAR, of bilateral relationship with Africa and the Mediterranean area, and management of the French food aid (200 000 t of grain per year). Since 2002, he has contributed for 9 years to the development of agriculture in the French overseas departments and territories as Technical Advisor "Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry" and as Director of ODEADOM. In 2011, Paul LUU was appointed Director of Agropolis International (Montpellier) before joining the CGIAR in September 2013 as Liaison Officer with the French Authorities, then as Protocol Officer. From September 2016, Paul is Executive Secretary of the “4 per 1000 Initiative: Soils for food security and climate”, launched at COP 21 in Paris. 

Rattan Lal ,Ph.D. , is a Distinguished University Professor and Director of CFAES Rattan Lal Center for Carbon Management and Sequestration, the Ohio State University, and was soil Physicist at IITA, Ibadan, Nigeria . He researches soil carbon sequestration , soil health, conservation agriculture, soil restoration and sustainable management. He has authored > 1000 journal articles , 550 book chapters, and written/ edited 100 books. He was President of the Soil Science Society of America (2006-2008), and the International Union of Soil Sciences (2017-2018). He holds a Chair in Soil Science and Goodwill Ambassador for Sustainability Issues for the IICA, Costa Rica. He was a member of the 2021-UNFSS Science Committee and Action Track 3 with focus on “Coalition 4 Action on Soil Health”. He is laureate of the 2018 World Soil Prize,2019 Japan Prize and 2020 World Food.

Dr. Leigh Ann Winowiecki is the Global Research Lead for Soil and Land Health at CIFOR-ICRAF, based in Nairobi, Kenya. A soil scientist, her research focuses on scaling farmer-centered landscape restoration, understanding drivers of degradation and quantifying the impacts of land management on soil organic carbon. Since 2009 she has co-developed and implemented the Land Degradation Surveillance Framework (LDSF) in over 40 countries across the tropics. The framework is a systematic methodology to assess ecosystem health and track restoration efforts across landscapes. She has published widely on soil organic carbon, ecosystem services and land degradation across sub-Saharan Africa and the tropics, including a coherent set of open access datasets. She co-leads the Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH), which aims to catalyze investments in soil health for human well-being and climate. She is on the Scientific Task Force and the Monitoring Task Force for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration as well as the Scientific Steering Committee for the Global Soil Health Programme. She co-leads the Landscape Restoration Transformative Partnership Platform. She is also a founding Board Member of the International Union of Agroforestry (IUAF).

Oliver Oliveros is the Coordinator of the Agroecology Coalition and heads the Coalition Secretariat. He was previously interim Executive Director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, a coalition of foundations working to leverage their resources to help shift food systems towards greater sustainability, security, and equity.  He also worked for the UN Food Systems Summit Secretariat as the Champions Network Engagement Lead, stewarding a global network of more than 100 food systems experts to maximize the value of their contribution to the Summit. Oliver previously worked as the Deputy Director at Agropolis Fondation, the French foundation for scientific cooperation focusing on agriculture and sustainable development; as the Global Coordinator of the DURAS Project which focused on scientific and civil society communities research collaboration; and as Partnership Officer at the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) Secretariat in FAO in Rome. Before coming to Europe in 1999, he served at the Ministry of Socio-economic Planning in the Philippines where he was extensively involved in project evaluation and investment programming in the agriculture and rural development sector as well as in the formulation of the country’s Agenda 21 and Medium-Term Development Plan.

Arwyn Jones has worked for the European Commission since 1993. He is currently leading the EU Soil Observatory at the
European Commission's Joint Research Centre, which is providing scientific support to a range of EU soil-related policy areas including the recently adopted proposal for a Soil Monitoring Law and the EU's Soil Mission. He also coordinates the LUCAS Soil Module, which provides harmonised assessments of soil characteristics across the EU, including trends in soil carbon stocks. He was the lead editor of the Soil Atlas of Asia,which was launched at the opening of the GSP Plenary.  He has a PhD in the use of remote sensing to map soils and landforms in the northern Sahara desert.