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  • Perspective
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Building on monitoring and conservation policies for global soil biodiversity

Nature Reviews Biodiversity volume 1, pages 806–816 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Soil biodiversity is essential for all ecosystem functions and for sustaining life on our planet. Despite this, soil biodiversity has historically been ignored in conservation and management policies and debates. However, the explicit inclusion of soil health in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) and consideration of soil biodiversity at the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) are important policy breakthroughs; all Parties to the CBD are now invited, on a voluntary basis, to report on the status of their soil biodiversity from 2026. This Perspective discusses pathways to build on the KMGBF and proposes that an integrated and system-based approach for future monitoring and conservation strategies is urgently needed to improve fundamental understanding of soil biodiversity and its contribution to ecosystem services. Currently, infrastructure and expertise barriers, regulatory restrictions, and insufficient data storage and sharing capacity limit the ability to effectively monitor global soil biodiversity. Prioritizing baseline data generation, mechanisms to store and share policy-relevant data, and effective societal engagement and governance at various implementation scales are urgently needed for successful monitoring and conservation outcomes.

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Fig. 1: Soil biodiversity, ecosystem functions and the Sustainable Development Goals.
Fig. 2: Global distribution of soil biodiversity and above-ground terrestrial biodiversity groups.
Fig. 3: Policy framework of soil biodiversity and the path forwards.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank M. Kobayashi for providing detailed feedback on the initial draft manuscript. Funding for this work was provided by the Australian Research Council (DP230101448). M.D.-B. acknowledges support from GRASS4FUN (Biodiversa+ 2022) funded by MCIU/AEI Unión Europea and from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation for the I + D + i project SOIL4GROWTH (PID2020-115813RA-I00) funded by MCIN/AEI. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of any employer or organization such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations or the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Penrith, New South Wales, Australia

    Brajesh K. Singh, Tadeo Sáez-Sandino & Min Gao

  2. Institute of Genomics for Crop Abiotic Stress Tolerance (IGCAST), Department of Plant and Soil Science, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA

    Pankaj Trivedi

  3. Department of Biology, Algoma University, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada

    Carlos Barreto

  4. Laboratorio de Biodiversidad y Funcionamiento Ecosistémico, Instituto de Recursos Naturales y Agrobiología de Sevilla (IRNAS), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Seville, Spain

    Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo

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Contributions

B.K.S., P.T. and M.D.-B. conceived the idea. B.K.S. wrote the first draft and all authors contributed to improvements. T.S-S. carried out mapping analyses and M.G. drew the figures in consultation with B.K.S.

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Correspondence to Brajesh K. Singh.

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Competing interests

B.K.S. serves as an elected Chair of the International Network on Soil Biodiversity (NETSOB) (unpaid voluntary position). C.B. previously worked (2024–2025) for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The other authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Reviews Biodiversity thanks Maria Tsiafouli, Gabriele Berg and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Strategic Framework: https://www.fao.org/strategic-framework/en

Paris Agreement: https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement

Science Policy Interface: https://www.unep.org/topics/environmental-law-and-governance/environmental-policy/science-policy-interface

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Singh, B.K., Trivedi, P., Sáez-Sandino, T. et al. Building on monitoring and conservation policies for global soil biodiversity. Nat. Rev. Biodivers. 1, 806–816 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44358-025-00108-y

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