Dear colleagues congratulations for the proposal of the Voluntary Guidelines for Sustainable Soil Management (VGSSM). These guidelines should be a significant contribution to the Objectives for Sustainable Development. I get access to the document just today, nevertheless I will be very pleased to provide some first comments, strictly as a professional with a long experience in soil and water conservation.
These guidelines are an appropiate response to the Revised World Soil Charter. Merits and demerits of the proposal are consistent with the approach of the revised charter. Thus, the greater input delivered by the guidelines is the concept of ecosystem services provided by soils to ecosystems and human well being. Also, the focus on "soil" rather on "land" is remarkable. This focus provide a new value that is the specific treatment to a basic element of the nature as is soil, rather the most complex concept of land that includes soil as well as vegetation, other biota, hydrological and ecological process, as defined in the text of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). This more specific approach provide some elements for weakness in the proposal, for example: (a) lack of an accepted definition of soil included in the text, and; (b) emergence of a new legal object, soil, that it seems may requires "integrity preservation" per se, despite law of mass conservation operating under a more integrated approach.
Lack of an accepted definition of soil may produce confusion or not, especially when term "soil" may be misused to make reference to the more ample term "land". In addition, the definition of Land Degradation Neutrality adopted by the XIIth session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNCCD has the same structure of the definition for Sustainable Soil Management included in the voluntary guidelines. This situation also may create confusion or not, but someone may considered that there is a parallel process where duplication of efforts may arise. Inclusion of a glossary may facilitate clarification, especially in terms like "soil resistance" or "soil resilience".
Concerning the issues of loss of a more integral view that may arise due to the underlying idea of soil preservation per se, it may be seen in the treatment of the erosion processes. The guidelines propose to get erosion rates to a minimum. In this idea erosion may be seen as a pervasive process because is intrisecaly contrary to soil preservation. But erosion is a natural process essential to landscape modelling, as well as river, stuarine a coastal biology. Minimum erosion eventually may create impacts quite similar to the construction of a dam in a river. Pressumably, a more appropiate concept in this case should be "accelerated erosion" that of course may require proper definition, but it may provide a concept for differentiation with erosion in an ecosystem approach.
There are many other comments that I would like to provide, but pressumably a revised text with change control may be more appropriate. I would appreciate very much somebody can indicate me the deadline to provide a revised text with control of changes.
Dear colleagues congratulations for the proposal of the Voluntary Guidelines for Sustainable Soil Management (VGSSM). These guidelines should be a significant contribution to the Objectives for Sustainable Development. I get access to the document just today, nevertheless I will be very pleased to provide some first comments, strictly as a professional with a long experience in soil and water conservation.
These guidelines are an appropiate response to the Revised World Soil Charter. Merits and demerits of the proposal are consistent with the approach of the revised charter. Thus, the greater input delivered by the guidelines is the concept of ecosystem services provided by soils to ecosystems and human well being. Also, the focus on "soil" rather on "land" is remarkable. This focus provide a new value that is the specific treatment to a basic element of the nature as is soil, rather the most complex concept of land that includes soil as well as vegetation, other biota, hydrological and ecological process, as defined in the text of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). This more specific approach provide some elements for weakness in the proposal, for example: (a) lack of an accepted definition of soil included in the text, and; (b) emergence of a new legal object, soil, that it seems may requires "integrity preservation" per se, despite law of mass conservation operating under a more integrated approach.
Lack of an accepted definition of soil may produce confusion or not, especially when term "soil" may be misused to make reference to the more ample term "land". In addition, the definition of Land Degradation Neutrality adopted by the XIIth session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNCCD has the same structure of the definition for Sustainable Soil Management included in the voluntary guidelines. This situation also may create confusion or not, but someone may considered that there is a parallel process where duplication of efforts may arise. Inclusion of a glossary may facilitate clarification, especially in terms like "soil resistance" or "soil resilience".
Concerning the issues of loss of a more integral view that may arise due to the underlying idea of soil preservation per se, it may be seen in the treatment of the erosion processes. The guidelines propose to get erosion rates to a minimum. In this idea erosion may be seen as a pervasive process because is intrisecaly contrary to soil preservation. But erosion is a natural process essential to landscape modelling, as well as river, stuarine a coastal biology. Minimum erosion eventually may create impacts quite similar to the construction of a dam in a river. Pressumably, a more appropiate concept in this case should be "accelerated erosion" that of course may require proper definition, but it may provide a concept for differentiation with erosion in an ecosystem approach.
There are many other comments that I would like to provide, but pressumably a revised text with change control may be more appropriate. I would appreciate very much somebody can indicate me the deadline to provide a revised text with control of changes.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Wilfredo H. Alfaro.
Forestry Engineer, M.Sc.