Healthy soil is the very foundation of our food systems and provides several vital ecosystem services, from carbon sequestration to improving food and nutrition security. Efforts to combat desertification, to move from scarcity to prosperity, will need to consider how to scale soil health, globally. With over one third of the Earth’s surface degraded and over 3.2 billion people negatively affected by degradation, continuing business as usual is no longer an option. The urgent need to transform our food systems has never been more critical. Now is the time for multi-stakeholder action to build an enabling environment at multiple levels for supporting, financing, scaling and monitoring healthy soil ecosystems. The session “Common ground: Soil health for nature, people, and climate” aims to spotlight the pivotal role of soil health in reshaping agricultural practices, ensuring food security, and combating climate change.