To mark World Soil Day – a campaign dedicated to raising awareness of the importance of healthy soil and sustainable management – the UNEP-WCMC Policy and Nature-based Solutions teams explore our involvement in a project aiming to change how soil health is monitored across Europe.
Once formally adopted, the EU Nature Restoration Law will commit Member States to having recovery measures in place for 20 per cent of the EU’s land and sea by 2030, expanding to cover all ecosystems in need of restoration by 2050.
The Nature Restoration Law includes binding targets to put in place measures to improve the amount of organic carbon in soils used to grow crops, and to restore degraded peatlands that have been drained for agricultural use. Broader restoration initiatives under the law will also have benefits for soil health.
Likely home to more than half of all species on Earth, soils make forests and farming possible, and provide clean air, flood regulation and waste recycling, to name just some of the ecosystem services they deliver. Soils are the world’s largest carbon sink, storing thousands of billions of tonnes of carbon, making conserving and restoring these ecosystems an important item on the agenda as world leaders meet in Dubai for this year’s climate conference COP28 to discuss how to meet global goals to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
This precious resource is finite and fragile. In the EU, more soil is considered unhealthy than healthy: it is estimated that between 60 and 70 per cent of soils are unhealthy. This means that as a result of changing physical, chemical and biological conditions – for example, rising soil temperature, presence of fertilisers, or loss of earthworms – there are limitations on the soil’s capacity to function as a vital living system and provide ecosystem services.
To address this, a group of experts that advises the European Commission has recommended a goal for at least 75 per cent of soils to be healthy or show significant improvement by 2030. The EU has a Soil Strategy, in which it aims to achieve healthy soils by 2050; healthy soils are also central to meeting the objectives of the European Green Deal and supporting the EU’s green transition objectives – from climate neutrality to healthy food systems and biodiversity conservation.
A new framework for soil health
Accurately recording progress towards healthy soils will be essential to achieving these ambitious targets – yet there is much still to learn about our soils. These complex ecosystems of sand, clay, silt, bacteria, fungi, microbes, insects and invertebrates have been described as ‘as diverse as a rainforest’, but relatively little is known about, for example, the impact of contaminants or changes to soil biodiversity over time. Carrying out harmonised assessment and monitoring the health of soils across Europe’s different ecosystems and land uses is crucial but complex. In recognition of this, in July 2023, the European Commission proposed a new law that focuses on improving monitoring to support the restoration and sustainable use of EU soils.
Contributing insights to the Soil Monitoring Law and other pertinent European national and regional policies is one of the main aims of the Soil Health BENCHMARKS project, in which the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) is a partner. The project is working with stakeholders across Europe to contribute towards the development of an Integrated Soil Health Monitoring Framework, which can be used by a variety of users and across local, landscape and regional scales.
UNEP-WCMC’s work supporting development of the framework includes working with public institutions, companies and individuals that are responsible for making decisions related to monitoring, reporting and verification schemes to assess soil health, to support agreement on the use of soil health indicators.
Indicators of soil health include levels of soil organic carbon, levels of enzyme activity or nutrient cycling, and physical properties such as pH, soil density, and other measures of structure.
At the outset, UNEP-WCMC is working to put together groups of stakeholders involved in monitoring, reporting and verification that are representative. Participants will vary from:
The selection of entities and systems will represent those working on soil health monitoring, reporting and verification across urban land, agriculture and forestry, at a range of spatial scales.
Following this, UNEP-WCMC will work with these stakeholders to determine priorities for monitoring soil health, then assess the suitability of available indicators developed earlier in the project. Ultimately, this process aims to deliver a set of clear and useable indicators for agriculture, forest and urban ecosystems that will be publicly available as part of the soil health monitoring framework.
Soils are the building blocks that allow life on land to thrive, but there is a lot that we still do not know about this precious asset or how to understand and monitor soil health. BENCHMARKS is therefore a vital project that UNEP-WCMC is excited to be part of. Our participation will bring together diverse perspectives from across sectors and land uses in order to reach a shared understanding of what constitutes healthy soil. This will support strengthened monitoring of soil health and influence the adoption of better soil management practices across Europe.
Kollie Tokpah, Associate Programme Officer in UNEP-WCMC’s Nature-based Solutions team
Participation and accessibility for soil health
UNEP-WCMC’s work with BENCHMARKS starts nearly a year into the wider project. To date, the BENCHMARKS team has organised 18 workshops across Europe, engaging with more than 500 participants. These workshops, implemented in 24 case studies, foster collaboration among a range of stakeholders, incorporating perspectives from individuals directly involved in land management, including farmers, foresters, and urban gardeners in order to generate insights into diverse attitudes to land management and soil health. Looking ahead, the project will carry out four further workshops, with the results to be shared on the BENCHMARKS website in Spring 2024.
BENCHMARKS has also produced a glossary of complex concepts related to soil health, soil functions and ecosystem services. Users can provide feedback to this so that its range and accuracy can be continually upgraded.
The workshops that took place in BENCHMARKS’ first year have validated our hypothesis that perceptions, understanding, management, and monitoring of soil health vary significantly across Europe. The prioritisation of soil functions differs across the continent, and we look forward to developing a framework that reflects the need to harmonise how we monitor soil health.
Fabio Volkmann, Multi-stakeholder Process Coordinator, Soil Health BENCHMARKS
Main image: AdobeStock_518236303
