Soil security as a roadmap focusing soil contributions on sustainable development agendas

Abstract

Long a rather abstract concept, sustainable development has since 2015 been defined by the United Nations in terms of goals (SDGs), specified by targets and indicators.Soils play an important role in several land-related SDGs by their contribution to ecosystem services that, in turn, contribute to biomass production (SDG2), water quality (SDG6), climate mitigation (SDFG13) and biodiversity preservation (SDG15). These goals have been adopted by the European Union when defining their Green Deal. However, sustainable development will only be achieved when stakeholders adopt appropriate management measures that result in a satisfactory level of all four ecosystem services. Adoption, however, is not only a function of technical considerations but is also highly affected by socioeconomic and even psychological factors. The soil security concept that considers both: “hard”and “soft” criteria, is therefore well suited to act as a roadmap towards a sustainable future, focusing soil contributions to ecosystem services and the SDGs. A storyline is proposed starting with connectivity, defining interaction processes among all partners involved in the sustainability debate, followed by condition, and capability that can be defined by a recently proposed quantitative expression of soil health. Soil Capitol expresses soil contributions to ecosystem services in financial terms and thus contributes to connectivity when examples show that non-soil contributions are much more expensive. Environmental laws and regulations, expressed by codification, ideally link soil performance to societal relevance but the tension between individual desires and societal demands requires modern forms of connectivity in terms of willingness to: “joint-learning”, supported by modern communication theory. Following the complete storyline of the 5C's, as proposed by the soil security concept, can make future soil research much more effective from a societal and political point of view.