The Expanded Field of Soil Remediation: Introduction

Scientists and policymakers increasingly frame soil degradation as a “global soil crisis,” positioning it as a biophysical problem requiring technical remediation. Such responses often extend rather than transform the social conditions producing degradation. We argue that the soil crisis is better understood as a crisis of relation: a breakdown in the social, political, economic, and ecological relations through which soils are sustained. From this perspective, to (re)mediate soil is not simply to restore function but to recognize it as a relational medium where natural and cultural processes converge and to examine the historical practices and relations that have shaped its degradation. Accordingly, we advance four interventions: shifting attention to lived human–soil relations; reframing questions to foreground how values shape social–ecological outcomes; developing a reflexive orientation toward “care-full” relations; and promoting practices that attend to the relations through which soils—and the worlds they sustain—become livable.

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