This report has been widely cited since its release and has helped shaped public response to the many issues facing soils since 2015 and catalyzed global discussions on sustainable soil management. It was a major effort of the Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils (ITPS), the main scientific advisory body to the Global Soil Partnership hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

Work is now underway by the ITPS on the next Status of the World’s Soil Resources Report, which will be published on World Soil Day in December 2025. Since 2015 the research community has provided new, authoritative information on the effectiveness of sustainable management techniques across many individual studies and on global modelling of many of the threats to soil functions. The goal of the 2025 report is to summarize this new information in a form accessible to policy makers and other soil managers.

Currently there are over 60 Lead Authors and 150 Contributing Authors working on seven regional assessments of the state of the world’s soils. These regional assessments are a unique element of the report and draw upon expert opinion from almost every nation to set the agenda for policy makers over the next decade.  To maintain the highest standards of scientific integrity, each element of the report is reviewed by eminent scientists. Governments around the world actively support and ensure the participation of these experts, thereby guaranteeing that that credible scientific evidence forms the basis of all the recommendations.

The International Year of Soils in 2015 helped to stimulate unprecedented interest in the global state of soils. The work of the ITPS and the Global Soil Partnership on the 2025 Status of the World’s Soil Resources Report will ensue that this momentum carries on into the next decade.