This issue explores the potential solutions for the good governance of soils. It highlights how gaps in regional and international legislation hinder the fruition of soil health, which can be defined as those soils able to function and sustain plants, animals, and humans as part of the ecosystem.  

Lifeng Li, Director of the Land and Water Division at FAO is cited in the opening section of the journal: “soils require the same level of political and legal protection as air, water and biodiversity.”

Good soil governance holds the power to ensure that land management is sustainable, ecologically sound and conducive to robust economies and societies.

“This special issue is an incentive to rethink approaches on current soil governance, while analysing and building more ambitious guidelines to create positive action paving the way for the transformation to sustainable societies worldwide,” said Natalia Rodríguez Eugenio, the GSP’s facilitator on soil governance. 

The co-authors examine soil governance from a multi-dimensional perspective, taking into account different international and national approaches and the cross-contextual implications for countries.  

By embedding soil-specific policies into existing legislation, the series of articles argue, national frameworks for soil conservation and sustainable soil management (SSM) can become more effective, changing the way we guard soil health. 

“Soil degradation is not an isolated phenomenon or a local problem. It represents a transboundary issue in which all stakeholders need to engage responsibly to ensure that soils are managed sustainably and that the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development are met,” said Li and his counterpart Dirk Messner, President of the German Environment Agency (UBA). 

Several of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) position soils centre-stage on the 2030 Agenda. While there is not an SDG dedicated to soil, seven goals directly or indirectly impact soils – or cannot be achieved without healthy soil. 

The GSP advocates to strengthen the existing legal instruments to safeguard soils from chemical, biological, and physical threats while developing new frameworks at national, regional, and global levels that fit the current socio-economic landscape. 

The GSP’s working group on soil legislation was established at the launch event of the SoilEX platform in January 2021. SoilEX is a global database that aims to facilitate access to information on existing legal instruments on soil protection and the prevention of soil degradation.  

The platform was created in coordination with FAOLEX, which is one of the largest databases of legal frameworks and instruments related to natural resource management, food and agriculture. 

For more information and to access the special issue please see: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/soil-security/special-issue/10VQ9HFPD6Z 

Want to brush up your knowledge on the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), view: https://sdgs.un.org/goals 

Want to learn more about the GSP’s work on soil governance, visit:https://www.fao.org/global-soil-partnership/areas-of-work/soil-governance/en/