Soil

Soil is a precious and scarce natural resource. More than 99 per cent of food world-wide comes from soil ecosystems. Land, of which soil is a key component, not only provides food, but plays a key role in regulating water and the global carbon budget, and is a valuable source of biodiversity. However soils around the world are degrading rapidly, threatening food and other securities and increasing vulnerability to climate change. We need sustainable land management practices, e.g. an integrated soil, land, and water management.

Articles:

• Rebuilding soil natural capital
• Governing the transformation of soils must urgently be improved
• Awareness, research, action: the Economics of Land Degradation (ELD) initiative
• Turning vicious cycles into virtuous ones
• What can conservation agriculture achieve?
• Promoting best practices in sustainable land management
• Bio-reclamation – Converting degraded lateritic soils into productive land
• Rangelands –sound management strategies for a vulnerable resource
• New instruments for better land governance
• Soil conservation in the European Union
• UNCCD – the accord for global land stewardship
• Let’s put soils on the global sustainable development agenda
• Experience with the System of Rice Intensification in Timor Leste
• Integrated Soil Fertility Management – a concept that could boost soil productivity
• Why the Green Revolution failed in sub-Saharan Africa