Facing policy challenges with inter- and transdisciplinary soil research focused on the UN Sustainable Development Goals

摘要

Our current information society, populated by increasingly well-informed and critical stakeholders,presents a challenge to both the policy and science arenas. The introduction of the UN Sustainable DevelopmentGoals (SDGs) offers a unique and welcome opportunity to direct joint activities towards these goals. Soil science,even though it is not mentioned as such, plays an important role in realizing a number of SDGs focusing onfood, water, climate, health, biodiversity, and sustainable land use. A plea is made for a systems approach to landuse studies, to be initiated by soil scientists, in which these land-related SDGs are considered in an integratedmanner. To connect with policy makers and stakeholders, two approaches are functional. The first of these isthe policy cycle when planning and executing research, which includes signaling, design, decision making,implementation, and evaluation. Many current research projects spend little time on signaling, which may leadto disengagement of stakeholders. Also, implementation is often seen as the responsibility of others, while itis crucial to demonstrate – if successful – the relevance of soil science. The second approach is the DPSIRapproach when following the policy cycle in land-related research, distinguishing external drivers, pressures,impact, and responses to land use change that affect the state of the land in the past, present, and future. Soilscience cannot by itself realize SDGs, and interdisciplinary studies on ecosystem services (ESs) provide anappropriate channel to define contributions of soil science in terms of the seven soil functions. ESs, in turn, cancontribute to addressing the six SDGs (2, 3, 6, 12, 13, and 15) with an environmental, land-related character.SDGs have a societal focus and future soil science research can only be successful if stakeholders are part ofthe research effort in transdisciplinary projects, based on the principle of time-consuming “joint learning”. Theinternal organization of the soil science discipline is not yet well tuned to the needs of inter- and transdisciplinaryapproaches.