Rattan Lal is Professor of Soil Science in the School of Environment and Natural Resources at The Ohio State University. From 1968 to 1969 he was Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sydney and soil scientist at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Ibadan, Nigeria from 1970 to 1987. He is recipient of an honorary degree of Doctor of Science from Punjab Agricultural University, India and of the Norwegian University of life Sciences in Aas, Norway. He is past president of the World Association of the Soil and Water Conservation (1987-1990), the International Soil Tillage Research Organization (1988-1991), and the Soil Science Society of America (2005-2008). He is a member of the U.S. National Committee on Soil Science of the National Academy of Sciences (1998-2002) and (2007-to date) and lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (1998-2000) which earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. He has served on the Panel on Sustainable Agriculture and the Environment in the Humid Tropics of the National Academy of Sciences, and has also been a consultant to FAO, World Bank, UNEP, GEF, UNDP, USAID and many other international organizations. He has authored and co-authored about 1375 research publications, has written 13 books and edited or co-edited 43 books. With almost 50 years of experience on tropical soils, soil physics, carbon sequestration, climate change and food security he joins Tropentag 2011 in Bonn.