Today is Word Soil Day, sign the petition!

The European Citizens Initiative People4Soils asks the EU to acknowledge soils as a common heritage to be protected, for the wellbeing of all European people. In order to accomplish that, we need one million signatures before september 2017. If you are already aware of the soil issue, please sign the petition here, today: WWW.PEOPLE4SOIL.EU. Otherwise, read on:

Imagine a medium sized nation, such as Hungary. Now imagine the whole surface of that nation covered by concrete and asphalt: that is the amount of EU agricultural land covered by roads and buildings over the last fifty years. At the same time, agricultural soil is eroded and degraded at an alarming rate of 30 football fields per minute. 

Half of our agricultural soils are threatened by the depletion of organic matter, tenths of millions hectares are already damaged by wind and rain erosion and desertification is advancing in many Mediterranean countries, making their cultivation more and more sensitive to droughts and climate change. Additionally, over 250,000 EU sites have chemically contaminated soil. 

Europe has the duty to preserve this most important natural resource: soil. This is the public call of the European Citizens Initiative (ECI) 'People4soil'. Nowadays, there is no legal acknowledgement for the ecological, social and economical services that healthy soils are able to provide to European people. We need policies with regards to restoring degraded soils, the safeguard of soil carbon sinks, and the prevention of soil sealing by settlements and infrastructures.

Add your signature and help us to get EU agricultural soils protected by law

The first 25.000 signatures have already been gathered. All adult European citizens can sign. Along with People4Soils and Stichting Sustainable Food Supply, we at Save Our Soils, Nature & More and Eosta  ask you to sign the petition today, on World Soil Day: www.people4soil.eu.