World’s Soil Resources

8 | Governance and policy
responses to soil change
8.1 | Introduction
This chapter provides an overview of policy and governance responses to soil change. While most attention
is given to issues at the global, regional and national levels, it is emphasized that effective responses nearly
always have a basis in local action by individual land managers. Indeed, understanding the interconnectedness
and the consequences of actions at each level is central to effective governance and policy.
This book, and in particular the regional assessments of soil change (Chapters 9 to 16), demonstrate that
at the global scale there is a qualitative appreciation of the pressures on soil resources but limited consistent
evidence on their condition and trajectories of change. These assessments reveal that some of the world’s soil
management challenges are immediate, obvious and serious – they arise partly because of the nature of soils
in different regions and their associated history of land management. Other problems are more subtle but
equally important in the long term – they require vigilance and a sustained policy response over decades. At
present, few countries have effective policies to deal with these problems. In short, the world’s soils need to
support at least a 70 percent increase in food production by 2050 (FAO, 2011) but there are some fundamental
uncertainties. For example:
Is there enough arable land with suitable soils to feed the world in coming decades?
Are soil constraints partly responsible for the apparent yield plateau for major crops?
Status of the World’s Soil Resources | Main Report Governance and policy responses to soil change
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