Dear WASWAC Councilors, Advisors, Regional Representatives and all members,

The time goes really fast! 2019 will be ended soon. At the New Year’s Eve of 2020, I would like to express the heartfelt blessing to you and your family on behalf of WASWAC for your great contribution to soil conservation in the world and valuable support to WASWAC in the past year.

In 2019, WASWAC has achieved a great progress in many aspects with the supports from all of you. Management of Council and secretariat is becoming more and more normalization and institutionalization. More new members joint our family. The official journal ISWCR has been indexed into SCIE series. The WASWAC Book won the financial support for publication and will be printed soon. WASWAC has established more closer link with many international organizations, such as FAO, UNESCO, GSP, IUSS, ISCO, ESSC, SWCS, LDD, SCSI and so on. WASWAC initiated the project on Global Soil Erosion Assessment and Mapping has made many progresses which brought attention from FAO project of GSER map. Last month we successfully held the fourth World Conference in India. The new council and president for the term of 2020-2022 has been elected. I believe WASWAC will have a more great future under the leadership of new council and president with the valuable support of yours.

It is now well-known that soils are fundamental to life on earth. But pressures on soil resources are reaching critical limits due to unsustainable human activities driven by a rapidly growing global population and increased demand for food, feed and natural resources. It is estimated half of the topsoil on the planet has been lost in the last 150 years due to soil erosion. Among the different threats soils are facing, erosion is the number one threat. It is big and severe challenge for researchers who are working on soil erosion and related fields. We should make more efforts to promote the global soil and water conservation.

I hope all of you a very prosperous 2020!

Li Rui