西亚试剂：Time for legislation

The GSP has concentrated its activities on promoting sustainable management of soils, for example by encouraging consistent research, education and good policy. In 2016, it will launch a World Soil Prize to reward best practice. Concrete action on the ground is in the hands of Regional Soil Partnerships that include all local stakeholders. So far, most of the GSP's work has been in organizing conferences and developing task-force plans of action. Sadly, these mostly provide vague expressions of intent. Four years after its creation, the GSP is under increasing pressure from NGOs and funders to deliver results.

The GSP's clearest call is for the development of a Global Soil Information System. Unfortunately, the GSP failed to establish a comprehensive partnership with everyone involved, and as a result several parallel independent projects have emerged, such as the GlobalSoilMap.net consortium and the Global Soil Information Facilities. Bringing all of these efforts together will be difficult.

“Soils are necessary for the food, fibre and fuel of a growing population.”
To underpin the GSP, an Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils (ITPS; of which I am chair) was established in June 2013. Like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the ITPS aims to provide scientific and technical guidance to policymakers. It is composed of 27 soil experts from across the seven FAO regions. Our ambition is to serve the GSP and all soil-related multilateral environmental bodies, such as the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The main product of the ITPS's first two years is the Status of World's Soil Resources report, scheduled for release at the closing ceremony of the UN International Year of Soils in December 2015. The report, the first comprehensive assessment of global soil resources, is the collaborative effort of more than 200 scientists. It highlights serious concerns such as nutrient imbalance: some parts of the world suffer from an excess of fertilizer use, whereas much of the developing world suffers from a severe lack of fertilizers. The ITPS is preparing practical recommendations for reversing these trends.

The GSP is the best current option for driving forward those recommendations, despite its shortcomings. The partnership needs to motivate all invested parties to develop commitments to specific actions. These should enshrine soil management in legislation tailored to each country's needs. The GSP needs to prove that it can be more than just a talking shop, and can generate political will and raise funding. The FAO has suggested an initial budget of $64 million over five years for the GSP7, mainly to help to develop the Global Soil Information System and to promote training and capacity building in developing countries. So far, less than 10% of that has been raised from donors, mainly the European Commission.

Increasingly, people speak of 'soil security'8, in analogy with food and water security. In a world facing increasing stress from a growing, hungry population and changing climate, soils will become ever more important.

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