Why in the News
- Recently, World Soil Day was observed globally on December 5, serving as a potent reminder of the need to protect soil, which is a life-sustaining and often overlooked resource.
- Theme: The theme for 2025, “Healthy Soils for Healthy Cities,” has notably shifted the focus from rural farmlands to the urban environment, highlighting the role of soil beneath concrete jungles as a dynamic ally for building a resilient urban future.
Background and Context
World Soil Day and the Global Urban Shift
- Establishment and Observance: World Soil Day was established by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, observed annually on December 5 to acknowledge soil as a silent and living resource essential for sustaining life.
- Global Urban Challenge: With over 56% of the global population now residing in cities, urban environments are facing numerous challenges, including food insecurity, pollution, devastating flooding, and extreme heat.
- Urban Soil as a Solution: Urban soil is presented as an often-forgotten ally situated at the heart of solutions to these challenges, its health directly linked to the resilience and well-being of urban populations.
The Hidden Power of Healthy Soil
- Vibrant Ecosystem: A teaspoon of healthy soil is known to contain more organisms than there are people on earth, an ecosystem that performs extraordinary services.
- Degradation Status: Despite its immense value, urban soil is listed among the most degraded natural resources, with the FAO noting that nearly a third of the world’s soils are degraded, a problem magnified within cities.
Extraordinary Services of Urban Soil
Key Functions for Urban Resilience
- Combating Climate Change and Extreme Heat:
- Heat Absorption: Healthy soils, particularly when covered with vegetation, absorb heat, mitigating the “heat island” effect where urban areas become several degrees warmer than surroundings.
- Carbon Sequestration: Soil acts as a carbon sink by sequestering atmospheric carbon.
- Natural Air Conditioners: Green spaces like parks, community gardens, and green medians function as natural air conditioners.
- Preventing Floods and Managing Water:
- Natural Sponges: Healthy soil is the city’s first line of defence against intensified rainfall, acting like a sponge to absorb rainfall.
- Groundwater Replenishment: Absorbed water is filtered, helping to replenish groundwater supplies, unlike impermeable concrete surfaces.
- Supporting Urban Food Systems and Biodiversity:
- Urban Agriculture Foundation: The growth of urban agriculture (rooftop farms, backyard plots) relies entirely on fertile soil, thereby shortening food chains and enhancing local resilience.
- Web of Life: Soil-based habitats support a diverse web of life, including earthworms, microbes, and pollinators, which are essential for decomposition and plant growth.
- Enhancing Mental and Physical Well-being:
- “Vitamin N” Benefits: Contact with nature, or “Vitamin N,” in urban green spaces has been proven to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression.
- Physical and Mental Health: Time spent in green, soil-rich environments, such as gardening, encourages physical activity and improves mental health.
Pressures Leading to Degradation
- Contamination Sources: Urban soils face contamination from industrial waste.
- Physical Damage: Severe compaction from construction and loss of organic matter are major issues.
- Sealing: Sealing by concrete and asphalt suffocates soil life, which weakens plant growth, threatens food safety, and cripples ecosystems vital for making cities livable.
Blueprint for Action: The 2025 Campaign
Key Actions for Soil Stewardship
The “Healthy Soils for Healthy Cities” campaign serves as a blueprint calling on municipal governments, planners, community groups, and residents to become stewards of the ground beneath them.
- Urban Soil Restoration and Protection:
- Rehabilitation Priority: Cities must prioritize rehabilitating degraded land through measures like compost addition, soil testing, and organic amendments.
- Protecting Non-renewable Resource: Limiting further soil sealing from new construction is equally critical to protect this non-renewable resource.
- Promoting Green Infrastructure:
- Replacing Concrete: Concrete must be replaced with soil-based solutions wherever possible.
- Vital Infrastructure: Soils under parks, rain gardens, and tree belts are considered vital infrastructure that effectively reduces flooding and heat stress.
- Championing Urban Agriculture:
- Soil Health Tool: Community and backyard gardens are powerful tools for improving soil health.
- Multiple Benefits: These initiatives provide fresh food, recreation, and social bonding, with the theme encouraging planting, even in containers on balconies.
- Embracing Responsible Soil Management:
- Eco-friendly Practices: Adoption of eco-friendly practices is necessary, which includes reducing chemical fertilizers, minimising pesticide use, and planting native species.
- Topsoil Protection: Protecting topsoil with mulching is an essential practice.
- Boosting Soil Literacy and Composting:
- Educational Initiatives: Schools are encouraged to host hands-on soil tests and workshops.
- Household Contribution: Every household can contribute by composting kitchen waste, transforming organic residues into nutrient-rich food for urban soil.
Way Forward
- Urban soil restoration prioritised through systematic rehabilitation programmes involving compost addition, regular soil testing, and organic amendments across degraded lands, complemented by strict regulations limiting soil sealing in new construction projects to preserve this non-renewable resource for future urban resilience.
- Green infrastructure expansion pursued by replacing impermeable concrete surfaces with soil-based solutions like rain gardens, tree belts, and vegetated parks, integrating these as core urban planning elements to mitigate flooding, heat islands, and pollution effectively.
- Urban agriculture initiatives scaled up via promotion of community gardens, rooftop farms, backyard plots, and container planting on balconies, fostering soil health improvement, local food security, biodiversity support, and social cohesion among residents.
- Responsible soil management practices institutionalised through widespread adoption of chemical fertilizer reduction, pesticide minimisation, native species planting, and topsoil mulching, alongside household-level composting of kitchen waste transformed into nutrient-rich amendments.
- Soil literacy campaigns intensified with schools hosting hands-on soil tests and workshops, empowering municipal governments, planners, community groups, and residents as active stewards committed to eco-friendly urban transformation.
Conclusion
- World Soil Day 2025 underscores that the foundation of a resilient city rests not solely on steel and concrete but on living, breathing soil performing critical roles in climate moderation, flood prevention, food production, biodiversity sustenance, and human well-being enhancement,despite severe degradation from urban pressures.
- The “Healthy Soils for Healthy Cities” campaign provides a comprehensive blueprint urging collective action by governments, communities, and individuals to restore, protect, and steward urban soil, ensuring cities become livable, sustainable ecosystems where healthy soils directly safeguard the health, resilience, and shared future of urban populations.
