Celebrating World Soil Day: Unleashing the Power of Soil for a Sustainable Future

Today is World Soil Day! Next to, for example, water and clean air, soil is a precious resource that underpins our planet's ecosystems, supports biodiversity, and sustains life. Unfortunately, the health of soils in Europe is in decline. About one third of European soil is currently unhealthy, according to the recent publication ‘The state of Soils in Europe’.  

Living labs  

Since it takes up to 1 000 years to form just 1 cm of healthy soil, we need to step up our efforts now to ensure future generations will still be able to enjoy healthy soils. A crucial effort towards this goal is ’A Soil Deal for Europe’ (Mission Soil). The Mission is instrumental in enhancing soil health and promoting sustainable soil management practices. As part of the EU's Horizon Europe programme, Mission Soil’s overall goal is to establish 100 Living Labs and lighthouses to lead the transition towards healthy soils by 2030. The co-creation of solutions on the ground, together with an ambitious research and innovation programme, soil monitoring and citizen engagement will ensure the long-term health and functions of soils.  

We're proud to share the significant progress that Mission Soil has made since its launch in 2021. Over 50 running R&I projects are addressing a wide variety of soil health challenges across Europe and beyond, such as enhancing soil monitoring, preserving soil biodiversity, discovering the subsoil, and preventing desertification. This year marks the launch of the first 25 Living Labs: Mission Soil is creating a network of real-life experimental sites that bring together researchers, policymakers, farmers, and citizens to co-develop and test solutions for sustainable soil management. Some Mission funded projects have already yielded very promising initial results, as for example NBSoil and HuMUS.  

The Nature-Based Solutions for Soil Management (NBSoil) project aims to co-create and test a learning pathway for existing and aspiring soil advisors. The project will design a blended learning programme to train a new wave of soil advisors. The training will provide participants with the tools to implement a holistic vision of soil health through nature-based solutions (NBS) and collaborate effectively. Nature-based solutions are actions to protect, sustainably manage, and restore natural and modified ecosystems that address societal challenges effectively and adaptively, simultaneously benefiting people and nature. NBSoil launched their Soil Academy in June 2024 – an important step towards the project’s goals. 

The Healthy Municipal Soils (HuMUS) project engages and activates municipalities and regions to protect and restore soil health. Municipalities are at the forefront of local soil management, regulation, innovation, and community-building and are therefore essential to deploying the Mission Soil on the ground. In addition to raising awareness about the importance of healthy soils, the project empowers communities to create suitable local solutions for themselves. By now, already 34 pilot projects are dealing with participatory soil governance at the local and regional level. 

Soil monitoring 

But Mission Soil is only just getting started. As we move forward, we're committed to advancing soil monitoring across the EU, collaborating with the European Soil Observatory (EUSO), supporting the Soil Monitoring Law proposal. This will enable us to better understand soil health and identify areas for improvement. We will also work closely with social sciences & humanities experts, as well as artists to further drive societal change.  

To achieve our mission of preserving our soils, we all need to get involved. You can find out how to apply for EU funding with your research projects on improving soil health and check out the guidelines for drafting compelling Living Labs proposals. You can also become a soil guardian, sign the Mission Soil Manifesto today and join a community of more than 3 100 people and entities!  

Monitoring Soil Biodiversity 

We know very little about the organisms that live in our soils. The EU Joint Research Centre has created a soil biodiversity monitoring scheme, sampling nearly 1,000 locations across the EU in 2018 and 2022. This comprehensive study provides invaluable insights into the microbes and animals that live in our soils, and how they are affected by human activities. 

Sharing soil health data 

The EU Soil Observatory collects information on soil health across the EU. They observed 4 main soil degradation processes:  

1. water erosion,  
2. wind erosion,  
3. soil loss due to crop harvesting  
4. and soil contamination. 

Fluctuations in these indicators are primarily driven by human activities and climate change. All the data is available online in the EU Soil Health Dashboard. 

Were you aware of the importance of soils? Let us know via comment!