On 8 April 2025, the HuMUS project proudly took part in the “Soil Health Now!” conference in Wageningen, where project partners ANCI Toscana and Louis Bolk Institute led a dedicated workshop titled: “Soil Health governance: tools and methods to enhance soil literacy and facilitate the decision making processes”.
The context
Today, approximately 60% of European soils are polluted, contaminated, or in many ways compromised by centuries of urbanisation, industrial and rural development, and careless waste management. The EU Mission Soil, the EU Soil Observatory, the Soil Strategy and the Soil Monitoring Law represent a soild European basis to counteract such a negative evidence and trend.
However, the issue of soil health – on top of its global relevance and urgency – also embeds a deep local dimension, in that it interferes in many respects with land destination and use regulations, practices and interest. It is therefore connected with spatial planning and governance decisions that are peculiar to local and regional policy and administrations.
In this context, it is necessary to establish constructive dialogues among public authority representatives, academia, citizens, businesses, associations and other Quadruple Helix stakeholders to help policymakers to understand the problems met by their soils and find viable solutions together.
The HuMUS workshop
The workshop brought together researchers, civil society, and local actors to explore innovative approaches to integrating soil health into territorial governance. The agenda focused on strategies to enhance soil literacy and facilitate more effective and inclusive decision-making processes at local and regional levels. Participants engaged in a simulation exercise designed to explore how soil-related issues can be reintroduced into political agendas in a respectful, constructive, and transformative manner.
The session presented a range of governance instruments and participatory tools developed by the HuMUS project and other Mission Soil initiatives. These resources are aimed at fostering structured dialogue among stakeholders such as policymakers, scientists, businesses, and citizens to support better understanding of local soil challenges and co-create viable solutions
Other contributions
The Medi-Terra project, a pilot initiative led by the Municipality of Pollica and funded through the HuMUS cascade funding scheme, was presented as a concrete example of community-based action on soil health.
The workshop also featured a contribution from LOESS, another EU-funded initiative under the Mission Soil programme.
The outcome
The HuMUS workshop at the “Soil Health Now!” conference served as an important platform for dialogue, knowledge exchange, and collaborative learning. It reaffirmed the importance of empowering local and regional actors in soil governance and highlighted practical tools that can help integrate soil health into spatial planning and policy agendas.
We thank the organisers, our partners, and all participants for their contributions to this important conversation.