'Conservation and Sustainability: Soils, Land Use and Development Policy

Soil is a form of natural capital. It is a living system of great complexity that delivers hugely valuable ecosystem services in both rural and urban environments. The management of soil has profound consequences for future economic and social outcomes

Professor Mark Kibblewhite is Head of the Department of Natural Resources at Cranfield University, which includes the University’s National Soil Resources Institute, Natural Resources Management Institute and Integrated Earth System Sciences Institute. He is an environmental scientist with a leading role in European land-based natural resources policy. His particular interest is in soil systems and he is the current chairman of the European Soil Bureau Network, as well as coordinator of a pan-European project (ENVASSO) providing technical support to the European Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection and the planned Soil Framework Directive. He joined Cranfield in 2002 from the Environment Agency where he was Head of Land Quality and he previously worked for Hyder Consulting, DTI, ADAS and Severn-Trent. He has an academic background in business economics and marketing, as well as soil science and environmental chemistry.
His lecture will cover the following themes:
Soil is a form of natural capital. It is a living system of great complexity that delivers hugely valuable ecosystem services in both rural and urban environments. The management of soil has profound consequences for future economic and social outcomes. This lecture will describe the soil system and some new scientific insights in to the evolution and functionality of the soil habitat. It will summarise the main threats to soil and critique the strongly emergent soil protection policy agenda within the European Union and the UK. A framework for future soil protection strategy will be explored, focusing on soil within existing and new urban development. This will include options for improving awareness of soil among urban citizens and decision-makers, and the use of new technology for collecting data and reporting information on the spatial extent of soil-based natural capital and the impacts on this from different land allocation and management scenarios. Questions that the lecture aims to answer are “What controls should be placed on future development to protect soil-based natural capital? How can soil within the urban zone be managed best to protect and enhance natural capital? How can the slow pace of soil development be accommodated within a rapidly growing urban economy? How can soils help us to adapt to climate change?”

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