Desealing can restore the natural functions of the soil in the long term. These functions are a prerequisite for adapting to the climate crisis and for safeguarding both the water balance and food production. However, desealing projects often conflict with other land use interests, especially in rural areas. Since some areas will still be sealed in the future, desealing is in any case necessary to achieve zero soil consumption. “Soil protection means setting limits, but it also means breaking up sealed areas and rehabilitating the soil underneath”, explains Marion Ebster, project manager at CIPRA International. “There exist instruments and strategies for this, but often an understanding of them and the will to implement them are lacking.”

This is where the Ground:breaking project comes in: it addresses the issue of desealing and the improvement both of typical soil functions on a site and biodiversity at several levels, while showing how desealing can succeed and how it can help us. Multilingual webinars explain existing strategies and their relationships with soil, such as the European Biodiversity Strategy 2030, the EU Soil Monitoring Act or the Nature Restoration Law. The project accompanies and advises four model municipalities in Slovenia, Italy, Germany and Austria in the preparation and implementation of their planned desealing measures. The core of the project is an Alpine-wide competition for desealing and soil protection measures aimed at promoting biodiversity. Ground:breaking will run until 2026 and is funded by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection.

Further information:

Publication “Save land, save soil” (de, en)

Photo courtesy of: https://atelier-olga.ch/