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Saving the ground beneath our feet: Establishing priorities and criteria for governing soil use and protection

The continual loss and impairment of soil ecosystem services (SES) across the globe calls for a fundamental reconsideration of soil governance mechanisms. This critical synthesis charts the history and evolution of national and international soil law and seeks to unravel certain challenges that have...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Peake, Lewis, Robb, Cairo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8613628/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34853698
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.201994
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author Peake, Lewis
Robb, Cairo
author_facet Peake, Lewis
Robb, Cairo
author_sort Peake, Lewis
collection PubMed
description The continual loss and impairment of soil ecosystem services (SES) across the globe calls for a fundamental reconsideration of soil governance mechanisms. This critical synthesis charts the history and evolution of national and international soil law and seeks to unravel certain challenges that have contributed to this failure in governance. It describes and categorizes law and policy responses to different soil threats, and identifies a worrying widespread absence of legislation for oversight and protection of agricultural soils from urbanization, as well as a lack of clear legal mechanisms to determine national priorities for soil protection. A reduction in the world's prime farmland threatens SES, including food security, carbon storage and biodiversity. Falling between the stalls of agricultural and environmental law, the fate of farmland is often left to planners who do not see themselves as responsible for soils. Consequently, legal instruments with the greatest power to affect soil, sometimes irreversibly, are often framed and worded with little or no reference to the soil. Nevertheless, emerging conceptual frameworks might offer positive outcomes. The authors advocate robust holistic policies of soil governance and land use planning that place SES and natural capital at the heart of decision making.
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spelling pubmed-86136282021-11-30 Saving the ground beneath our feet: Establishing priorities and criteria for governing soil use and protection Peake, Lewis Robb, Cairo R Soc Open Sci Ecology, Conservation and Global Change Biology The continual loss and impairment of soil ecosystem services (SES) across the globe calls for a fundamental reconsideration of soil governance mechanisms. This critical synthesis charts the history and evolution of national and international soil law and seeks to unravel certain challenges that have contributed to this failure in governance. It describes and categorizes law and policy responses to different soil threats, and identifies a worrying widespread absence of legislation for oversight and protection of agricultural soils from urbanization, as well as a lack of clear legal mechanisms to determine national priorities for soil protection. A reduction in the world's prime farmland threatens SES, including food security, carbon storage and biodiversity. Falling between the stalls of agricultural and environmental law, the fate of farmland is often left to planners who do not see themselves as responsible for soils. Consequently, legal instruments with the greatest power to affect soil, sometimes irreversibly, are often framed and worded with little or no reference to the soil. Nevertheless, emerging conceptual frameworks might offer positive outcomes. The authors advocate robust holistic policies of soil governance and land use planning that place SES and natural capital at the heart of decision making. The Royal Society 2021-11-24 /pmc/articles/PMC8613628/ /pubmed/34853698 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.201994 Text en © 2021 The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Ecology, Conservation and Global Change Biology
Peake, Lewis
Robb, Cairo
Saving the ground beneath our feet: Establishing priorities and criteria for governing soil use and protection
title Saving the ground beneath our feet: Establishing priorities and criteria for governing soil use and protection
title_full Saving the ground beneath our feet: Establishing priorities and criteria for governing soil use and protection
title_fullStr Saving the ground beneath our feet: Establishing priorities and criteria for governing soil use and protection
title_full_unstemmed Saving the ground beneath our feet: Establishing priorities and criteria for governing soil use and protection
title_short Saving the ground beneath our feet: Establishing priorities and criteria for governing soil use and protection
title_sort saving the ground beneath our feet: establishing priorities and criteria for governing soil use and protection
topic Ecology, Conservation and Global Change Biology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8613628/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34853698
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.201994
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