The sustainable use of soils: A journey from wicked problems to wicked solutions for soil policy

Abstract

This is the first of two connected papers challenging the wicked nature of soils and proposing a soil legislation based on wicked solutions towards soil sustainable use. This first contribution describes the research rationale behind this legislative proposal and analyse in detail the wicked nature of soils and possible solutions based on recent scientific knowledge.

The degradation of soils due to unsustainable management practices presents significant challenges to global agriculture and environmental protection. Despite numerous soil-related policies and scientific advancements, soil degradation persists. This evidence depicts the existence of a vast gap between the grand policy ambitions and statements and the weakness of their positive factual implementation in the real world, especially when dealing with large-scale soil protection (e.g., regional, national, and continental).

Here these difficulties have been explained by the fact that the sustainable use of soil is a wicked problem. In this specific case, there are two crucial questions: (i) can we identify all or at least the most important wicked problems which make it so difficult to produce an effective soil policy to challenge soil degradation and promote the sustainable use of soils? (ii) and then, once we have identified these problems, how can we challenge each of them?

Here, we shall briefly analyse systematically these wicked soil-related elements, which most often lay in the fringe between (environmental and agricultural) policies and technical-scientific means. We believe that an effective soil law must take on-board these wicked problems especially in view of an effective sustainable soil management.