Soils are the most complex and diverse ecosystems in the world. Soil is one of nature’s most complex ecosystems and one of the most diverse habitats on earth. It contains many different organisms, which interact and contribute to the global cycles that make life possible. Nowhere in nature organisms are so densely packed as in soil communities. However, this biodiversity is little known as it is underground and largely invisible to the human eye. In addition to providing humanity with 98.8% of its food, soils provide a broad range of other services, from carbon storage and greenhouse gas regulation, to flood mitigation and providing support for our sprawling cities. But soil is a finite resource, and rapid human population growth coupled with increasing consumption is placing unprecedented pressure on soils through the intensification of agricultural production, and increasing the crop yield per unit area of soil. Indeed, the human population has increased from ca. 250 million in the year 1000, to 6.1 billion in the year 2000, and is projected to reach 9.8 billion by the year 2050.
Healthy soils have a degree of resilience that allows them to maintain structure and function in the face of repeated disturbance, including temperature perturbation, compaction, and pollution. They provide essential ecosystem services such as food production and can help us achieve several Sustainable Development Goals, including zero hunger, clean water, sanitation, life on land, flood regulation, and conservation of biodiversity. However, human-induced degradation, such as soil erosion, contamination, and loss of soil organic carbon is compromising soil resilience. Population growth, unsustainable agricultural practices, deforestation, industrial development, urbanization, and climate change increasingly pose the greatest threats to healthy soils. Once disturbed beyond a critical level, soils are at risk of entering a downward spiral toward an alternative, degraded state. This degraded state is characterized by a loss of soil functions and services including the ability to provide food for humanity and sustain human life on earth. As soil restoration is a slow process, soil is often considered a non-renewable resource.
The downward spiral of soil degradation is fueled by soil threats that are strongly interrelated and linked through powerful feedback loops. On a local scale, loss of soil structure due to compaction by heavy machinery or intensive grazing results in loss of soil biota and soil functioning and further degradation. On a global scale, there is a strong positive feedback loop between soil erosion and climate change. Soil erosion causes a loss of soil organic carbon as carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. Warmer conditions then drive increases in rainfall intensity, wind speed, and wildfire, all of which can increase soil erosion.
A degraded soil state is not uncommon in human history. The fall of past civilizations has been linked to societies’ poor protection of soil health. Among these, the Sumerian civilization in Mesopotamia was undermined by salinization and upland erosion, while both Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire suffered from widespread, severe soil erosion. Where healthy soils initially enable the growth and prosperity of civilizations, the increased demand for food production and unsustainable agricultural practices result in severe soil degradation. Followed by a decrease in food security and political stability, soil degradation compromises the resilience of civilizations and initiates their collapse. In the past, however, the human population was smaller, more scattered, and less connected than at present. This means that past impacts of soil degradation only undermined local ecosystems and societies. Today, with a human population of 7.9 billion people that is expected to grow to 9.8 billion by 2050 and a strongly globalized world, soil degradation is no longer a local issue. Land degradation is already negatively impacting the well-being of at least 3.2 billion people worldwide by decreasing food security and resilience of the landscape to extreme weather events, increasing inequality and political instability. In the European Union alone, costs related to soil degradation exceed 50 billion euros a year. On a global scale, soil degradation has also been linked to mass migrations, violence, and armed conflicts. Soil degradation is estimated to affect 90% of the soils globally by 2050, meaning almost all global ecosystems and populations will be directly affected.
The current intensification of agricultural practices is already resulting in the unsustainable degradation of soils. Major forms of this degradation include the loss of organic matter and the release of greenhouse gases, the over-application of fertilizers, erosion, contamination, acidification, salinization, and loss of genetic diversity. This ongoing soil degradation is decreasing the long-term ability of soils to provide humans with services, including future food production, and is causing environmental harm. The global society must be shortsighted by focusing solely on the near-immediate benefits of soils, such as food supply.
A failure to identify the importance of soil within increasingly intensive agricultural systems will undoubtedly have serious consequences for humanity and represents a failure to consider intergenerational equity. Of utmost importance is the need to unequivocally recognize that the degradation of soils leads to a clear economic cost through the loss of services, with such principles needing to be explicitly considered in economic frameworks and decision-making processes at all levels of governance. Experts contend that the concept of the Water-Food-Energy nexus must be expanded, forming the Water-Soil-Food-Energy nexus.
The increasing human population is placing greater pressure on soil and water resources and threatening our ability to produce sufficient food, feed, and fiber. A growing population can place stress on the environment, transportation, and the provision of natural resources like water, food, and energy when governments fail to think strategically or are late to implement adequate adaptive reforms. The ineffective management of natural resources can result in their scarcity and environmental damage, both of which are detrimental to initiatives aimed at encouraging sustainable development. As a result, there is a growing consensus within our global community that the protection of natural resources and the implementation of environmentally and economically sound agricultural practices are of the utmost priority.
At the same time, if appropriate policies are adopted, an increasing population can also spur economic expansion and result in a larger labor force which is advantageous for sustainable development. Yet, it is crucial to ensure that environmental conservation and the safeguarding of natural resources go hand in hand with economic progress.
According to experts, there is a 95% chance that the population of the planet will increase from the current 7.9 billion people to over 11 billion by 2100. For the most part, this expansion will occur in low- and lower-middle-income nations. The highest growth rate will be registered in sub-Saharan Africa which, according to scientists, will nearly double to between 2 to 2.2 billion people from the current 1.18 billion. These forecasts are rather alarming given that the least developed nations in that region have the lowest health and academic performance on the globe; high population expansion, without proper mitigation, will therefore simply exacerbate the current problem.
The basic physical, chemical, and biological properties of soils must be maintained for sustainable agricultural practices. Through the study of soil science, the importance of this heterogeneous assemblage of minerals, organic matter, organisms, air, and water as a key component of our global environment becomes self-evident. Soils provide a wide range of important ecosystem services, such as a living filter for water, a sink for carbon, a regulator of atmospheric gasses, and a medium for plant growth which helps to sustain all life on this planet.
Scientific research continues to reveal how earth system processes are often driven by reactions taking place in the soil. However, human evolution, and our agricultural dependence, have altered the scope of these soil processes and drastically changed the face of our planet. Except for minor contributions from aquaculture and hydroponics, it is the soil to which we are tied for most of our agricultural products. Throughout our history, we have relied on our ability to alter landscapes, manage soil and water, and domesticate crops and animals to help meet our basic human requirements.
Our stewardship of soil, water, and biological beings, microbes, insects, animals, and plant resources is a critical component of sustainable agriculture. This approach to agriculture ensures that food and fiber production is conducted in a way that minimizes the degradation of natural resources and permits long-term production in an economically viable way. Sustainable agriculture takes advantage of traditional agricultural techniques, as well as the most recent technological advances. Tied closely to sustainable agriculture, are the concepts of food security and safety, which are based around the fact that all people should have access to safe and nutritious food to sustain a healthy life.
Iran currently faces many soil erosion-related problems. These issues result from some inherent characteristics and anthropogenic triggering forces. Nowadays, the latter plays a more important role in accelerating erosion with further emphasis on soil erosion-prone arid and semi-arid regions of the country.
The annual rate of soil degradation in Iran is sevenfold higher than the global average while the soil formation process is much slower than in other parts of the world due to its special geological formations, the head of the Water and Soil Protection Department in Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization, affiliated to the Agriculture Ministry, said, “Estimates of annual global average erosion rate is 2.2 tons per hectare, while the figure has surpassed 16.5 tons per hectare in Iran.”
This contribution attempts to identify and describe the main reasons behind accelerated soil erosion in Iran. Different types of soil erosion affect approximately 1.2 million km2 of the land in Iran. So water erosion removes some 500 million tons of soil from about 15 million hectares of agricultural land each year. Iran represents one of the clearest examples of a country deeply affected by land degradation processes such as soil erosion, soil subsidence, sinkholes, and reduction of soil productivity and water quantity as well as quality.
Soil erosion is one of the most important environmental problems in Iran because millions of tons of rich and fertile soil are lost every year due to inappropriate management. Therefore, mapping and assessing soil erosion risk is an essential approach to natural resource management and planning. Experts outside of government suggest that soil erosion costs around $50 billion annually in Iran. The various driving forces of soil erosion include soil type, soil vulnerability to erosion, land-use patterns, unnecessary and improper development of infrastructures, and illegal exploitation of natural resources. Due to the vast extent of watersheds, government mismanagement of lands, and state ignorance, it is impossible to implement proper watershed management and soil conservation schemes as a whole. Therefore, to increase the performance of watershed management practices, first, projects must start from less degraded areas and erosion hotspots need to be identified and prioritized in terms of soil erosion potential.
When speaking about various existing environmental challenges in Iran, one must always point out the IRGC and various religious entities affiliated with the regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s contribution to such a crisis. Engineers in the IRGC became involved in infrastructure development and water resource management during the Iran-Iraq War. Following the conflict, Khamenei ordered the creation of Khatam-al-Anbiya, the construction arm of the IRGC. Sepahsad, Khatam-al-Anbiya’s dams building arm, was created in 1992. The aim was to create jobs for IRGC engineers and supply resources for reconstruction under the administration of the former regime’s president Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Sepahsad and its partner Mahab Quds, a contractor who oversaw the construction of dams in a variety of water-vulnerable provinces, are sometimes referred to jointly as the “water mafia.” Both organizations have pushed for construction projects that spread wealth only among the elite involved in running them. The methods deployed to do so include inflating the cost of dams while providing shoddy work in the absence of monitoring and evaluation support.
Combined collaboration of such devastating doctrine has created many economic, social, political, and other crises not only in Iran and the region but also, for the peace and security of the world. Iran’s environmental issues aren’t things that can be contained within the country’s borders but they will become global issues just like its terrorism and its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Recent modeling studies in Iran suggest that major changes in the agricultural and forestry policies present key problems to be solved in the short-to-medium term. Of course, it won’t happen under the cleric’s rule. The lack of sufficient data noted by several investigations means that comprehensive nationwide studies that consider recent climate and vegetation trends are scant due to fear of elimination of investigators and lack of research freedom. With satellite observations now providing long time-series data of relevant parameters at a relatively high spatial resolution overcoming the risk of misinterpreting natural inter-annual variation, a new opportunity arises to explore data over years, regional scales, as well as exploring the data with increased granularity to explore temporal and spatial patterning within the data.
To counter soil erosion, experts emphasize the importance of strengthening vegetation, developing rangelands, increasing vegetation cover, and proper watershed planning to prevent the wastage of surface water, building small dams and diverting dams, and transferring water to sloping lands for afforestation. The implementation of aquifer and watershed management plans is also crucial in mitigating soil erosion. The most scientifically sound and cost-effective approach to safeguarding the soil is through the execution of natural resources and watershed management practices, afforestation, and strengthening of vegetation. Proper livestock management, restraining land destruction, and prevention of plowing sloping lands in the direction of the slope are also important.
* Khalil Khani is an Environmental Specialist and a Human Rights activist. He holds a Ph.D. in Ecology, Botany, and Environmental Studies from Germany and has taught at the University of Tehran and the Hesse State University in Germany. He is also a Doctor of Medical Psychology from the United States.
