Background: Societal challenges impact on how humans exploit natural resources. Only few integrated scenarios exist, which include changes in soil properties, water availability, food, and timber, fibre, or bio-energy production. Consequently, mutual synergies and trade-offs, what is often referred to as the nexus, remain unknown or unconsidered. Future scenarios do exist for the impact of land use and land cover change on climate and biodiversity but not vice versa, e.g. impact of biodiversity changes due to climate change on soil properties. A few integrated scenarios do exist, which include food production, bio-energy and wood biomass production, climate change and biodiversity, exploring pathways for achieving corresponding global targets. The results show a possibility to meet the demand for food and energy security but without achieving international climate and biodiversity targets at the same time. The integrated scenarios, which have been developed so far, have not taken into account the impacts on soil, water availability, floods and droughts; the timber and fibre production; nor their vital feedback on food, bio energy, climate and biodiversity and vice versa. To find out what scenarios benefit to the society AND to the environment very comprehensive scenarios have to be elaborated. The results may be lead to soil management and to spatial planning as well.
Goal: Elaborating explorative and target oriented scenarios considering integrated, spatially-explicit models that take into account major trade-offs and synergies between ecosystem functions, land use and societal challenges. External effects of our economy (import of goods, environmental footprint into developing countries) should be taken into account as well.
Rationale from the themes: Demand: We have to secure the ability to achieve the satisfaction of secure food and energy supply while ensuring the provision of fundamental climate and biodiversity functions simultaneously. But there is the concern of uncertainty related to forecasting the actiual need for additional demands for water, fibre and sustainable soils into the future; and unprecedented population increase in areas with low reserves of productive land that are also vulnerable to land degradation and climate change question our ability to satify societal needs. Consumption patterns, demographic growth and resource-efficiency technology transfer are key issues to be considered.
Natural Capital: Scenarios are needed for the development of demands of soil properties, amount of land (in different modeled land use strategies, e.g. organic versus conventional agriculture) but also for different purposes (food, fibre, fuel, fodder). Natural capital as a limited resource needs to be considered in such scenarios. Carry capacities, tipping points and so forth are to be considered for developing reliable and consistent scenarios. Scenarios should include all types of land use (urban, forest, agriculture, grassland) to find out which type of use in recommended under certain soil properties and societal demands.
Land Management: Scenario development is used to better understand potential futures. It helps to better understand the drivers and inhibitors of a potential (desired or undesired) scenario and, therby, gives indicators which can inform land management. – How we can compensate the gap between demand and existing soil properties by sustainable land management? How can we remediate degradation? What alternatives are given beside typical agriculture (urban agriculture)? Developing land use models that incorporate natural and human-induced factors as well that contribute to the halt of land degradation and that could be used for land planning and land management are needed. Road map for the implementation and operationalization of the SDG-target “land degradation neutral world”.
Net Impact: Methods and Data elaboration is needed to count and assess the net impact to soil, water, sediment and products (4 F) in order to achieve food security and land degradation neutrality.
So what? Caused by a growing population, increasing soil and land degradation the remaining scarce fertile soils with good properties are in danger to become overused. This may lead again to more degradation. To know by modeling scenarios and to assess the major impacts in every scenarios might decrease further degradation, secure food and give answers to the way how to reach the target of land degradation neutrality. Changes in the economy and the society should estimate like growing / shrinking areas and their impact to the land-soil-sediment-water nexus.
Links to other fields: There is also a link to the problem of refugees, land abandonment / degradation in states suffering from war and conflicts, and problems of resettlement from rural to urban areas. These scenarios have also taken into account.