Sustainable soil and land management using Functional Land Management: an overarching policy framework

Discussions around soil policies are framed by the Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection (COM (206)231final) launched by the European Commission in 2006. The withdrawal of the proposed Soil Framework Directive in 2014 means that currently there is no direct legislation for soil protection. Functional Land Management (FLM) is designed to respond to the growing challenges on the soil and land resource and to be a coherent policy support framework to optimise the returns from the land through sustainable use of Europe’s soil resource. LANDMARK, an EU Horizon 2020 project, is quantifying the supply of soil functions across Europe, determined by soil properties, land use and soil management practices. Within FLM, contrasting demands are framed as EU policies and may apply at very different scales from farm-to-European scale. Decisions related to soil are primarily made at a local/farm scale; however institutional arrangements and actors at multiple scales exert influence on such decision-making. This research, in alignment with LANDMARK objectives, seeks to further the FLM framework through an exploration of the role and influence of the multiple actors in the governance space for soil functionality by way of network analysis. This will help to identify existing and alternative points of initiative, coalition/collaboration opportunities or gaps in the network for soil functions. Also, this research will conduct a shared learning evaluation of soil policies for FLM in non-EU contexts, specifically China and Brazil. The result will be a policy support model for the sustainable governance of land to meet multiple complex targets.