Good Governance for “Sustainable
Management of Soil” on National
and International Level: How to Do It?
Harald Ginzky
1 Introduction
Soils are an issue which increasingly attracts the awareness of policy makers,
scientists and the civil society. Three facts underline this assumption: the world’s
community has obliged itself in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of
2015
1 to strive to achieve, by 2030, a “land degradation neutral world”.
2 Between
the years 2013 to 2017, four “Global soil weeks” took place in Berlin, Germany.
3
UNCCD has interpreted itself as the international lead organization to deal with the
objective of “land degradation neutrality”.
4 The food crisis, the envisaged need for
soils for renewable energy production about 10 years ago and the then initiated
marketing of soils itself which was debated under the term “land grabbing”, sparked
the increasingly intensified debate on soils and lands.
5
H. Ginzky (*)
German Environment Agency, Dessau, Germany
Development and Rule of Law Programme [DROP], University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch,
South Africa
e-mail: harald.ginzky@uba.de
1 United Nations (2015).
2 As soils are the fundamental component of land the obligation for “land degradation neutrality” is
valid for soils too.
3 Further information under https://globalsoilweek.org/.
4 Boer et al. (2016), pp. 61–62.
5 Ginzky (2016), pp. 1–2. Also other environmental problems have been or are even still neglected:
A problem which is now high on the agenda is marine litter in the oceans. But it took same time to
get there. Currently, the loss of insects (in Germany long-term studies document a loss of about
75%) is actually not really debated although it might have tremendous effects on the food chain, the
biodiversity and on food security.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
H. Yahyah et al. (eds.), Legal Instruments for Sustainable Soil Management in
Africa, International Yearbook of Soil Law and Policy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36004-7_3
35
Management of Soil” on National
and International Level: How to Do It?
Harald Ginzky
1 Introduction
Soils are an issue which increasingly attracts the awareness of policy makers,
scientists and the civil society. Three facts underline this assumption: the world’s
community has obliged itself in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of
2015
1 to strive to achieve, by 2030, a “land degradation neutral world”.
2 Between
the years 2013 to 2017, four “Global soil weeks” took place in Berlin, Germany.
3
UNCCD has interpreted itself as the international lead organization to deal with the
objective of “land degradation neutrality”.
4 The food crisis, the envisaged need for
soils for renewable energy production about 10 years ago and the then initiated
marketing of soils itself which was debated under the term “land grabbing”, sparked
the increasingly intensified debate on soils and lands.
5
H. Ginzky (*)
German Environment Agency, Dessau, Germany
Development and Rule of Law Programme [DROP], University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch,
South Africa
e-mail: harald.ginzky@uba.de
1 United Nations (2015).
2 As soils are the fundamental component of land the obligation for “land degradation neutrality” is
valid for soils too.
3 Further information under https://globalsoilweek.org/.
4 Boer et al. (2016), pp. 61–62.
5 Ginzky (2016), pp. 1–2. Also other environmental problems have been or are even still neglected:
A problem which is now high on the agenda is marine litter in the oceans. But it took same time to
get there. Currently, the loss of insects (in Germany long-term studies document a loss of about
75%) is actually not really debated although it might have tremendous effects on the food chain, the
biodiversity and on food security.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
H. Yahyah et al. (eds.), Legal Instruments for Sustainable Soil Management in
Africa, International Yearbook of Soil Law and Policy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36004-7_3
35