Our current information society, populated by increasingly well-informed and critical stakeholders,
presents a challenge to both the policy and science arenas. The introduction of the UN Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs) offers a unique and welcome opportunity to direct joint activities towards these goals. Soil science,
even though it is not mentioned as such, plays an important role in realizing a number of SDGs focusing on
food, water, climate, health, biodiversity, and sustainable land use. A plea is made for a systems approach to land
use studies, to be initiated by soil scientists, in which these land-related SDGs are considered in an integrated
manner. To connect with policy makers and stakeholders, two approaches are functional. The first of these is
the policy cycle when planning and executing research, which includes signaling, design, decision making,
implementation, and evaluation. Many current research projects spend little time on signaling, which may lead
to disengagement of stakeholders. Also, implementation is often seen as the responsibility of others, while it
is crucial to demonstrate – if successful – the relevance of soil science. The second approach is the DPSIR
approach when following the policy cycle in land-related research, distinguishing external drivers, pressures,
impact, and responses to land use change that affect the state of the land in the past, present, and future. Soil
science cannot by itself realize SDGs, and interdisciplinary studies on ecosystem services (ESs) provide an
appropriate channel to define contributions of soil science in terms of the seven soil functions. ESs, in turn, can
contribute to addressing the six SDGs (2, 3, 6, 12, 13, and 15) with an environmental, land-related character.
SDGs have a societal focus and future soil science research can only be successful if stakeholders are part of
the research effort in transdisciplinary projects, based on the principle of time-consuming “joint learning”. The
internal organization of the soil science discipline is not yet well tuned to the needs of inter- and transdisciplinary
approaches.JRC.H.5-Land Resources Managemen
