Europe’s soil is being irreversibly lost and degraded mainly due to natural factors such as climate change and human activities such as agriculture. While an investment in soils is necessary, soils can take decades to recover. Given this scenario, the EU-funded InBestSoil project will design an economic valuation system of the ecosystem services delivered by a healthy soil and the impacts of soil interventions, and assess its incorporation into business models and incentives. This will allow public and private organisations to assign economic value to their actions. Involving 19 partners like farmers and enterprises from 10 countries, InBestSoil will provide data, evidence, tools and models to assess how investment in soil health can contribute to long-term resilient and sustainable use of soil.
The idea behind the IBS is to translate into monetary values the ecosystem services provided by healthy soils (not only those related to the production of food and fibers (provisioning services), but also regulating and cultural services: their capability to store water and carbon, their role as a water filter, to act as a biodiversity pool…), as well as the interventions we carry out to improve soil health. With this valuation we can co-design business models, develop new incentives and create policy recommendations.
With all of this, we will try to increase awareness of the opportunities to invest in soil health and facilitate the creation of new businesses to maintain and restore soil quality.
We will work around 9 case studies: 3 living labs and 6 lighthouses.
Major outputs:
• Datasets from literature reviews and meta-analyses to perform soil health assessment;
• with economic valuation of soil ecosystem services;
• with data from the ex-post evaluation of soil business models;
• on environmental impacts of upscaling carbon farming business models across Europe;
• from surveys, questionnaires and decision-making processes about new business models;
• with data from review, surveys and questionnaires about policy and economic incentives;
• and with data from surveys and questionnaires about economic and financial innovation schemes in LH and LL;
• co-creation plan for stakeholder engagement;
• research integrated protocols on how to co-design new business models;
• map of barriers and drivers to new business models;
• and updated carbon farming certification scheme through the inclusion of soil health indicators: land managers, businesses, investors, policymakers.