Do Current European Policies Prevent Soil Threats and Support Soil Functions?

Nadia Glæsner,Katharina Helming,Wim De Vries

doi:10.3390/su6129538

Abstract

There is currently no legislation at the European level that focuses exclusively on soil conservation. A cross-policy analysis was carried out to identify gaps and overlaps in existing EU legislation that is related to soil threats and functions. We found that three soil threats, namely compaction, salinization and soil sealing, were not addressed in any of the 19 legislative policies that were analyzed. Other soil threats, such as erosion, decline in organic matter, loss of biodiversity and contamination, were covered in existing legislation, but only a few directives provided targets for reducing the soil threats. Existing legislation addresses the reduction of the seven soil functions that were analyzed, but there are very few directives for improving soil functions. Because soil degradation is ongoing in Europe, it raises the question whether existing legislation is sufficient for maintaining soil resources. Addressing soil functions individually in various directives fails to account for the multifunctionality of soil. This paper suggests that a European Soil Framework Directive would increase the effectiveness of conserving soil functions in the EU.

Highlights

Despite growing pressures on European soils and the danger that these pressures pose to the services that healthy soils provide, there is no common EU policy on soil protection
The analysis addressed the state of existing soil-related policies in terms of soil threats and soil functions and identified gaps and overlaps in soil protection in existing policies
We evaluated the need for separate legislation on soil conservation by assessing whether existing policies adequately prevent or reduce soil threats and prevent the reduction of or improve soil functions in view of grand societal challenges

Summary

Introduction

Despite growing pressures on European soils and the danger that these pressures pose to the services that healthy soils provide, there is no common EU policy on soil protection. To fill the gap in European environmental legislation and to provide a more holistic approach to soil protection in the EU, the European Commission presented a new policy in 2006 that was titled “Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection” [2]. This followed a comprehensive stakeholder consultation and included a proposal for a Soil Framework Directive [3]. France, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Austria opposed the proposal [4] on the grounds of the subsidiarity and proportionality principles, expected costs and the administrative burden They questioned the value that the new policy added to existing Union law [5]. The proposal had been pending since 2006, but was withdrawn in May 2014 [6], because the Soil Framework Directive had been pending for eight years during which time no effective action had been taken [7]

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