Abstract
Who owns the soils? What seems to be a straightforward legal issue actually opens up a debate about the ecosystem services that can be derived from soils and the distribution of benefits and responsibilities for sustaining functioning and healthy soils. In particular, agricultural land use may be constrained by a lack of properly defined property rights. Using the new institutional economics perspective, we show that multifunctionality of soils and an attribute-based property rights perspective substantiate the intuition that land property implies special obligations towards the common good. The concept of ecosystem services can illustrate the variety of beneficiaries of multifaceted soil ecosystem services. This allows identification of reasons for unsustainable soil management that result from imperfections in the definition of property rights. We suggest implications for improved governance of agricultural soils using two case studies in the EU context: the EU Common Agricultural Policy and the use of planning instruments to steer agricultural soil use in Germany. Thus, we contribute to achieving the societal goals of more sustainable land use by detecting causes of shortcomings in current land regulation and by suggesting governance approaches to support a more sustainable management of agricultural soils.
Highlights
Soil, or, more generally, the pedosphere, is an essential element of most ecosystems
Our overall perspective in this paper is derived from New Institutional Economics (NIE), where the definition of property rights regimes is taken as a starting point for developing institutional rules and governance structures for soil management
Sustainable land management is challenged with inadequate consideration of the complexities and full spectrum of soil functions, which make up fertile, healthy, and well-functioning soils, and which are the basis for the many soil products demanded in moderneconomies
Summary
More generally, the pedosphere, is an essential element of most ecosystems. Since private property is highly protected in modern democracies, this may constitute a challenge for sustainability—if soil management generates externalities, their internalisation implies that property rights must be infringed to some extent. This is true for both spatial and intertemporal externalities. Our overall perspective in this paper is derived from New Institutional Economics (NIE), where the definition of property rights regimes is taken as a starting point for developing institutional rules and governance structures for soil management. We will discuss some definitional issues, reviewing and refining existing approaches that framed the contribution of soils to human well-being in terms of the ecosystem service concept (Section 2).
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