Towards a global convention to secure soil

Despite its enormous importance and contributions, soil has been historically undervalued and often overlooked. To address this gap, the Soil Security Assessment Framework (SSAF) offers a comprehensive method for quantifying soil’s functions, services, and resilience toward threats, across five dimensions: capacity, condition, capital, connectivity, and codification. Together, these roles and dimensions operationalise soil security by translating soil’s biophysicochemical, socio-economic, and governance contributions into comparable metrics. In this context, the promotion of a Global Convention to Secure Soil is an essential instrument for translating growing awareness into binding global cooperation, ensuring that soil is recognised, valued, and safeguarded as the living foundation of all terrestrial systems. This paper outlines a possible pathway towards achieving a Global Convention to Secure Soil. By preserving soil diversity, preventing loss of functionality and services, reducing threats to soil integrity, and promoting sustainable use of soil, an international initiative to secure soils would elevate soil’s visibility on the global stage.