Soil, soul, spirituality, and stewardship

Soil, the most basic among all natural resources and essential to provisioning of numerous ecosystem services (ESs) that are critical for human well-being and nature conservancy, is prone to degradation because of land misuse and soil mismanagement. The ever-increasing impact of anthropogenic activities has raised environmental concerns since the 1960s (Carson 1962; Peterson 2001; Plumwood 2001; Kureethadam 2017; Moore 2017). However, threats to the environment are not only the anthropogenic impacts, but also a fundamental change in the relationship between humans and the terrestrial system with far-reaching and unintentional impacts on natural and social processes (Moyses and Soares 2019), along with exacerbated risks of soil degradation (figure 1). Figure 1 Links between human population, environmental issues, food insecurity, and agricultural problems. It is argued that the finite soil resource is prone to risks of anthropogenic degradation, which are aggravated by the current and projected climate change (IPCC 2019). Human use directly affects 70% of the global ice-free land surface estimated at 1.31 × 108 km2 (5.057 × 107 mi2). About 30% of ice-free land or 3.93 × 107 km2 (1.517 × 107 mi2) may be affected by human-induced degradation and is undermining the well-being of two-fifths of humanity (~3.2 billion people), which may trigger mass human migration and increasing conflicts (IPCC 2019; IPBES 2018). Among principal causes of soil degradation are rapid expansion and unsustainable management of agroecosystems (e.g., crop lands and grazing lands). War extends beyond the confrontation between nations or communities—it decimates an often-overlooked third party, nature, encompassing soil, …