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Status of the World's Soil Resources 2026 – Policy brief

  • Publication | 2026
Global Food and Nutrition Security

Key messages:

  • Soil resources are under mounting pressure from a combination of socioeconomic and environmental challenges. Over half of all regions soil assessments have indicated as poor or very poor soil stewardship efforts, and current measures are insufficient to halt or reverse soil degradation in many places.

  • Overall, soil management remains largely unsustainable worldwide. Soil erosion remains the most severe threat to soil health globally, although all threats are interconnected and often reinforce one another through cascading degradation processes that affect multiple soil functions simultaneously.

  • A critical implementation gap persists between proven solutions and their adoption on the ground at the scale needed to avoid, reduce and reverse soil degradation. Roughly half of regions report low or very low adoption of sustainable oil management practices and only ~10 percent show improving trend since 2015.

  • Closing the gap between knowledge and action demands immediate, coordinated action: enabling policies, incentives, capacity building and strong collaboration across stakeholders are essential to scale up sustainable soil management and safeguard soils for future generations.

Resources
More information and links
Geographic coverageGlobal
Available from

27 Aug 2026

Related organisation(s)FAO - Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Knowledge service | MetadataGlobal Food and Nutrition Security | Sustainable Food Systems
Digital Europa Thesaurus (DET)soil resourcesMonitoringsoil pollutionsoil protectionpolicymaking
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