Abstract
The general concept of sustainable development has been specified in terms of goals, targets, and indicators by the UN Sustainable Development Goals, adopted in 2015, followed by the Green Deal of the European Union in 2019. The focus on targets and indicators does, however, not address the issue as to how these goals can be achieved for land-related SDGs in the real world, and attention in this paper is therefore focused on how land management can contribute to providing ecosystem services in line with the aims of the SDGs and the Green Deal. Agricultural production systems should at least produce healthy food (SDG2 and 3), protect ground- and surface water quality (SDG6), mitigate climate change (SDG13), avoid soil degradation, and support biodiversity (SDG15). The corresponding ecosystem services are discussed with particular emphasis on the role of soils, which are characterized in terms of soil health, defined as: contributing to ecosystem services in line with the SDGs and the Green Deal. Appropriate management, as developed and proposed by researchers working jointly with farmers in living labs, can only be realized when it is part of sound long-term business plans, supported by independent advice that is focused on farmers’ concerns based on the requirements for adaptive management. The research effort in living labs, addressing “wicked” problems, needs to be judged differently from classical linear research. As the development of successful ecosystem services requires an interdisciplinary research effort based on a systems analysis, SDG-oriented soil research in the future should be focused on: (i) presenting suitable data to the interdisciplinary effort beyond standard data to be found in existing databases; (ii) using soil types as “carriers of information” to allow extrapolation of results; (iii) providing data with a comparable degree of detail when analyzing the various ecosystem services, and (iv) revisit past experiences in soil survey and soil fertility research when contact with farmers was intense, as is again needed in future to realize ecosystem services in line with the SDGs and the Green Deal.
Highlights
The iconic Brundtland report of 1988, “Our Common Future”, has been instrumental in emphasizing the urgency to put the issue of sustainable development on the international policy agenda
A total of 60–70% of soils in the EU are degraded for various reasons that inhibit the provision of significant soil contributions to ecosystem services [5]: pollution by chemicals, poor soil structure due to compaction, depletion of soil carbon leading to low biological activity, loss of biodiversity and occurrence of erosion
If we focus on the exact measurement of indicators defined for each of the ecosystem services concerned, each one with sufficient replicates and spatial coverage to be scientifically sound, scientific quality can be achieved in the Living Lab context
Summary
The iconic Brundtland report of 1988, “Our Common Future”, has been instrumental in emphasizing the urgency to put the issue of sustainable development on the international policy agenda. A total of 60–70% of soils in the EU are degraded for various reasons that inhibit the provision of significant soil contributions to ecosystem services [5]: pollution by chemicals, poor soil structure due to compaction, depletion of soil carbon leading to low biological activity, loss of biodiversity and occurrence of erosion These processes have been studied for decades by soil scientists and proposed alternative forms of soil management have apparently not been convincing to most farmers lacking convincing evidence for more efficient use of production factors and more robust and reliant business models [6,7]. (ii) the development of an operational approach toward the provision of ecosystem services, to be provided by Living Lab research, as a contribution toward the realization of land-related SDGs (iii) the position of soil science in an interdisciplinary context; and:.
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