One Soil, One Planet, No Treaty

ABSTRACT

We have always known that soil varies. We have spent two centuries classifying that variation: by horizon, type, capability and jurisdiction. What we have been slower to recognise is that beneath the diversity lies a single system: one continuous pedosphere whose processes move across every boundary we have drawn around it. The Sahara fertilises the Amazon. Pesticides leach from one nation's fields into another's groundwater. Dust carries degraded material across oceans. Soil is not many things. It is one thing expressed differently across the planet. This unity has consequences for governance that we have yet to act on. Up to 40% of the world's land is degraded, threatening an estimated US$44 trillion in annual economic output, while a US$325 trillion natural capital asset remains without a binding international instrument to protect it. We have treaties for the atmosphere, biodiversity and the high seas. Soil has none. Drawing on the parallel with ocean governance where recognising one continuous system made a global treaty conceivable, we argue that the same shift is now urgent for soil and that the conditions to act are, for the first time, in place.