ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the legal and political instruments and on the development of soil and land protection in international law. It presents an overview of the relevance of the Rio conventions and the soft law mechanisms for the protection and sustainable use of soils. The chapter describes the framework for current discussion and focuses on the legal basis of soil protection on the international level (mainly UNCCD but also UNFCCC and CBD). It also analyses the Sustainable Development Goal process. The methods applied are legal comparisons and different kinds of legal interpretation techniques. The chapter finds that the existing legal instruments on international level are not sufficient to meet the requirements of a comprehensive approach to protect and sustainably use the soils. Soils demand attention at the same level as biological diversity and climate change. Therefore, a specific binding legal instrument is needed on the international level, for example a protocol on land degradation neutrality and the protection and sustainable use of soil, as proposed in a draft by the World Commission on Environmental Law of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Regarding the Sustainable Development Goal 15 and its Target 15.3, the chapter finds that the SDG process can also trigger the discussion. Although the current reality shows that soils are still considered the “poor nephews” in international law, thinking might shift to acknowledge the importance of land and soils for sustainability as a whole in the future.
