The Alpine Soil Partnership (AlpSP) was established during the Interreg Alpine Space project, Links4Soils, and launched its activities following the official project kick-off in Ljubljana, Slovenia in 2017. The partnership initially comprised of the project partners of Links4Soils, but since then expanded to include those of SOIL:OurInvisibleAlly as well. All members of the partnership are united around a shared goal: protecting and restoring Alpine soils, as well as raising awareness about the importance of sustainable soil management practices in the Alpine region.
“Caring for Soils – Where Our Roots Grow”
This is the underlying slogan of the common framework of the Alpine Soil Partnership, which can be summarized as:
- Soils are relevant factors for functioning ecosystems and perform essential services for us. The UN adopted 17 Goals that are necessary for Sustainable Development (SDGs). Soils can contribute to at least ten of them, out of which this project focuses heavily on SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), 4 (Quality Education), 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), 13 (Climate Action) and 17 (Partnerships for the Goals).
- Soils affect and are affected by climate change. They store more carbon than the atmosphere and vegetation together and play an essential role in climate change mitigation and adaptation by enhancing the resilience of their environment. At the same time, climate change has been changing and challenging the balance of many ecosystems. Alpine soils are particularly sensitive to such changes due to the steep relief of slopes and the highly diverse ecosystems present in close proximity to one another.
- “Soil management is sustainable if the supporting, provisioning, regulating, and cultural services provided by soil are maintained or enhanced without significantly impairing (…) biodiversity. (World Soil Chapter, 2015)”.The success of sustainable soil management practices can be deduced from improved soil parameters such as (higher) presence of earthworms, low or reduced soil erosion and compaction rates, increased organic matter content and enhanced soil respiration, among many others.
Soils are currently most threatened by soil sealing, soil erosion and a loss of soil organic matter. - Sustainable soil management needs to be adopted in all land-use sectors (agriculture, forestry, tourism, spatial planning) through the careful selection of specific practices that do not hinder the principal goals of a given sector. For example, sustainable soil management measures in agriculture should not intervene with the capacity of the respective soils’ food provisioning capacity.