ИСТИНА

Developing soil policies is an unavoidable stage prior to any implementation of soil protection measures. All countries will have to deal with the national and transboundary effects of soil degradation in order to ensure the sustainability of essential ecosystem services provided by soils. In this context, the FAO has established a multilateral initiative Global Soil Partnership (GSP) whose activities are covering the entire globe with the mission to facilitate and contribute to the exchange of knowledge and technologies related to soils. Moreover, region-specific aspects for implementation are considered and strengthened through regional soil partnerships for actions addressing various local approaches, cultural specificities and regional priorities. The core tasks of the regional partnerships are to enable cooperation and knowledge transfer within the region while being able to match the regional knowledge about the state of soils, its proper management (good practices), and actions for awareness raising and research. The European Soil Partnership (ESP) has been established in October 2013. Given its very large geographic extent, covering all Europe and part of Asia, for a total of 40 countries, the establishment of sub-regional soil partnerships was encouraged, and Eurasian Sub-regional Soil Partnership (EASP) was launched in November 2013. More recently, in November 2017, the Alpine Soil Partnership was set up as a regional and territory specific initiative that will promote soil protection and land management in the Alpine region. According to the “FAO- The Status of the World’s Soil Resources Report”, the following threats in Europe were identified as the prominent ones: soil sealing, salinisation and pollution. In this respect, the ESP established its implementation plan according to the main priorities, also identified by the 2012 European Commission - Soil Thematic Strategy (STS). The EASP has operated autonomously and established its specific Implementation plan with the respect to the priorities of 13 member countries, focusing on areas affected by soil salinity. The ESP has taken a role as an umbrella network covering 40 countries and has encouraged the establishment of goals that would benefit the ecosystem services while keeping stable socioeconomic and politically relevant issues in the region.