Regulatory measures in water legislation that can support sustainable soil management

The nexus between soil and water is manifold. Healthy soils contribute to safe water sources, and sustainable water management contributes back to healthy soils. All of these aspects are underlined by legislation.

Sustainable soil management is an integral part of land management and many jurisdictions around the world may address soil within land management instruments or within soil-specific legislation. Some countries may also include provisions related to soil management in agriculture, land, environmental, and most relevantly for this particular piece, in water laws. Further, a number of soil-specific pieces of legislation may contain provisions explicitly dealing with water related issues.

This brief article will explore how the regulatory measures commonly contained in national water laws can be used to support sustainable soil management. Common features that will be considered include environmental criteria in permits/concession for water abstractions (controlling water availability and supporting biodiversity), requirements on treatment and discharge of wastewater (reducing pollution, acidification and biodiversity losses in soils), irrigation legislation (aiming to retain appropriate amounts of water in soils by either draining waterlogged areas or providing irrigation to areas susceptible to droughts), legislation on flood control (preventing floods from washing away topsoil) and climate change legislation.

By choosing a related but separate field as a topic of inquiry – water legislation – the piece further shows how the sustainable management of soils requires an interdisciplinary effort and is affected by a constellation of legal instruments, going far beyond individual soil-specific pieces of legislation.