Status of World's Soil Resources 2026 report has been released

04 September 2026

In an effort to improve understanding of the status of this resource and to identify threats and activities leading to its degradation, the Intergovernmental Technical Panel of Soils (ITPS) supported by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and its Global Soil Partnership (GSP) embarked in 2014 on the preparation of a global assessment to enable countries to better understand what actions should be taken to promote sustainable soil management.

The Report on the Status of the World Soil Resources (SWSR) 2015 is a reference work and a milestone among the documents assessing global soil quality and soil health change. Its publication was possible thanks to the work of the first ITPS.

Ten years later, in 2026, the ITPS and the GSP secretariat publishes a second edition of the SWSR where all the scientific documents and publications reporting on the evolution of the status of soils and of the different soil threats will be taken into account, together with regional assessments, to know what has been the trend of the status of soils in these 10 years and where are we facing to.

The regional status and trend of threats to functions for New Zealand soils is documented in chapter 13.4 from page 664.

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