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The Global Soil Partnership (GSP) was formally established by members of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) during its Council in December 2012. The Council recognized soil as an essential natural resource, which is often overlooked and has not received adequate attention in recent years, despite the fact that production of food, fiber, fodder, and fuel critically depends on healthy soils. The Mandate of the GSP is to improve governance of the limited soil resources of the planet in order to guarantee agriculturally productive soils for a food secure world, and support other essential ecosystem services, in accordance with the sovereign right of each State over its natural resources. In order to achieve its mandate, the GSP addresses the following five pillars of action to be implemented in collaboration with its regional soil partnerships: 1. Promote sustainable management of soil resources for soil protection, conservation and sustainable productivity; 2. Encourage investment, technical cooperation, policy, education, awareness and extension in soil; 3. Promote targeted soil research and development focusing on identified gaps, priorities, and synergies with related productive, environmental, and social development actions; 4. Enhance the quantity and quality of soil data and information: data collection (generation), analysis, validation, reporting, monitoring and integration with other disciplines; 5. Harmonisation of methods, measurements and indicators for the sustainable management and protection of soil resources. The Plan for Pillar Four of the GSP essentially addresses the development of an enduring and authoritative global system to monitor and forecast the condition of the Earth’s soil resources. The Plan for Pillar Four analyses six key design considerations that affect both the feasibility and eventual utility of the global soil information system. 1. The degree of integration between global, national and other systems 2. Choices between distributed versus centralized designs 3. The degree to which the system provides access to comprehensive versus harmonized minimum data sets 4. Finding the optimal balance between the mapping and monitoring components of the system 5. Ensuring roles and responsibilities are clearly defined with clear incentives for data providers 6. Establishing mechanisms to take full advantage of advances in soil measurement and data analytics.
