The European Union (EU) has recently announced its new Soil Strategy to better protect soil ecosystems as part of the Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. The EU’s Farm to Fork Strategy and the Zero Pollution Action Plan aim for soil protection. The status of soil biodiversity protection has not been comprehensively assessed. The review includes 54 articles addressing soil biodiversity conservation at the EU or Member States level. We also explored regulatory, incentive-based and knowledge-based instruments and strategic policy documents at the EU and national levels to determine whether they adequately protect soil biodiversity. Our review of 507 literature references concluded that only eight EU member states explicitly address threats to soil biodiversity in 14 regulatory instruments while 13 countries mainly focus on implicit threats to soil biodiversity, whereas six countries do not consider soil biodiversity. At the EU level, current directives and regulations only tackle individual threats to soil biodiversity.
We found soil biodiversity protection best achieved as a common action at the EU level. An EU-wide, legally binding protection could complement national law to guarantee an EU-wide minimum level of soil biodiversity protection following coherence and quality standards while preventing surging costs of not acting. The Soil Health Law foreseen for 2023 opens doors to ensure healthy soils and holistic soil protection
54 articles from literature addressing soil biodiversity conservation at the EU or Member States level.
Legally binding instruments or communications at Member States level.