Voluntary Guidelines For Sustainable Soil Management

The Voluntary Guidelines for Sustainable Soil Management (VGSSM) embody a framework for worldwide application addressing sustainable management of soils (SSM) in all type of land use systems. They promote the effective and viable maintenance and enhancement of the ecosystem services that soils provide such as food, feed, fiber production, climate regulation, nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration, and the regulation of water quality and quantity. Their overarching goals are to achieve food security for all, improve nutrition and support the progressive realization of a judicious management of non-renewable natural resource in the context of sustainable development. They represent a key output for the Global Soil Partnership that demonstrate once again to be an effective global policy forum where global soil issues are discussed and addressed by multiple stakeholders. The Guidelines serve as both a complementary tool fostering the implementation of the revised World Soil Charter and as a reference for a wide range of committed stakeholders, such as government officials, policy makers, farmers, pastoralists, forest and land managers, extension specialists and agricultural advisors, development partners, civil society, private sector and, academia, etc. The VGSSM’s added value is in its principal aim: setting out established scientific principles and internationally acknowledged recommended management practices for the responsible governance of soils. By setting out these technical and policy recommendations, they provide guidance to all stakeholders on how sustainable soil management can be achieved.

This technical guide for addressing gender equality in Sustainable Soil Management (SSM) is designed to provide an easily accessible and understandable reference on how to apply the Voluntary Guidelines on Sustainable Soil Management (VGSSM) for building healthy soils, while ensuring gender equality and women’s empowerment in all aspects of SSM. It is intended for use by a wide audience, including policymakers, public institutions and development partners, as well as by rural communities, farmers’ organizations, women and youth groups, and agricultural advisory services involved in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of soil management policies and programmes. The guide may also be useful for other relevant stakeholders, including academia and research organizations, intergovernmental organizations and non‑governmental organizations, civil society and the private sector, who can play an important role in supporting, strengthening and documenting efforts made to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment in SSM.

This book covers soil health/management but also addresses issues such as reverting land degradation, improving soil carbon and biodiversity, mitigating climate change and enhancing ecosystem services/functions. This book is comprised of 12 chapters by leading academics and scientists from across the globe, and deals with various issues, prospects and the importance of “Sustainable Soil Management” under different agro-climatic conditions, including India, and also covers other regions in North America, South America, Australia, Africa and South Asia. This book will be extremely useful to researchers, scientists, students, farmers and land managers for efficient as well as sustainable management of natural resources with the theme of one-health i.e. soil-plant-animal-human-planetary health.

Despite almost a century of research and extension efforts, soil erosion by water, wind and tillage continues to be the greatest threat to soil health and soil ecosystem services in many regions of the world. Our understanding of the physical processes of erosion and the controls on those processes has been firmly established. Nevertheless, some elements remain controversial. It is often these controversial questions that hamper efforts to implement sound erosion control measures in many areas of the world. This book, released in the framework of the Global Symposium on Soil Erosion (15-17 May 2019) reviews the state-of-the-art information related to all topics related to soil erosion.

This book presents an important discussion on future options for sustainable soil management in Africa from various perspectives, including national soil protection regulations, the role of tenure rights, the work of relevant international institutions such as the UNCCD and FAO, and regional and international cooperation. This first volume of the new subseries Regional Perspectives to the International Yearbook of Soil Law and Policy includes contributions by African and international experts alike. Given the range of key topics covered, the book offers an indispensable tool for all academics, legislators and policymakers working in this field. The “International Yearbook of Soil Law and Policy – Regional Perspectives” series discusses central questions in law and politics that concern the protection and sustainable management of soil and land in different regions of the world.

During the last decades, soil organic carbon (SOC) attracted the attention of a much wider array of specialists beyond agriculture and soil science, as it was proven to be one of the most crucial components of the earth’s climate system, which has a great potential to be managed by humans. Soils as a carbon pool are one of the key factors in several Sustainable Development Goals, in particular Goal 15, “Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss” with the SOC stock being explicitly cited in Indicator 15.3.1. This technical manual is the first attempt to gather, in a standardized format, the existing data on the impacts of the main soil management practices on SOC content in a wide array of environments, including the advantages, drawbacks and constraints. This manual presents different sustainable soil management (SSM) practices at different scales and in different contexts, supported by case studies that have been shown with quantitative data to have a positive effect on SOC stocks and successful experiences of SOC sequestration in practical field applications. Volume 3 includes a total of 49 practices that have a direct impact on SOC sequestration and maintenance in cropland, grassland, integrated systems and farming approaches.