Every year, 5 December marks World Soil Day, an international day to celebrate healthy soil and advocate for the sustainable management of soil resources. This year, World Soil Day focuses on urban soil with the theme ‘Healthy Soils for Healthy Cities’, inviting policymakers and citizens to rethink urban spaces and build greener, more resilient, and healthier living environments.
Sustainable soil management practices are essential as they contribute to the protection and preservation of this precious resource, and their implementation has positive effects, such as reducing erosion and pollution as well as enhancing the absorption of water. Improper management, on the other hand, can harm all types of soils, disrupting their natural balance and starting an almost irreversible process that can only be repaired over decades – if at all.
As valuable habitats of great importance for the hydrological balance, biodiversity, and landscapes in the Alps, moors and wetlands are complex systems that provide diverse ecosystem services. The Alpine Convention’s Soil Protection Working Group focused on the state of moors in the Alps in its previous mandate, the result of which was the Peatland Statement. Now available in all Alpine languages, this short statement offers a definition of moors as well as suitable instruments and measures for their protection. Moreover, it showcases one best practice selected from each Alpine country such as renaturation projects or awareness-raising about the harmful impacts of peat extraction.
The Peatland Statement highlights that a combination of voluntary and mandatory measures aimed at creating incentive systems for rewetting moors as natural areas or for site-adapted agricultural and forestry use is of central importance for the conservation and restoration of moors in the Alpine region.
