Soils play a key role in the nutrient, carbon and water cycles: they provide raw materials and food, represent the planet’s biggest carbon store and contribute to water purification. However, this natural resource is limited and non-renewable. Today, between 60% and 70% of EU soils are not healthy and over 400 km² of soils are lost to urban development and infrastructure every year.
Previously discussed only in the context of depollution, soils are increasingly the subject of integrated management. If combating industrial pollution remains topical with issues such as emerging pollutants and their transfer (PFAS, HCH, microplastics etc.), it is necessary to restore degraded soils that have been rendered impermeable or artificialised and to rehabilitate wastelands, which comprise key land resources in the fight against urban sprawl.
The new European strategy adopted at the end of 2021 aims to grant legal protection to soil, in the same way as water or air. Based on a “Santé des sols” (Soils’ health) directive planned for 2023, it aims primarily to return the pollution of soils to “levels considered non harmful to human health and natural ecosystems” and to attain “zero net artificialisation” by 2050.
As well as improvements in the areas of diagnostics, treatments and the management of excavated soils, new solutions are appearing with the aim of “energising” soil quality to restore their proper functioning.
