The guidelines should not be limited to agriculture alone: Many submissions stressed the need to expand the guidelines to include non-agricultural land uses and pointed out the disparity between the World Soil Charter and the Guidelines in this regard. Need to develop indicators for SSM and monitor adoption: Many submissions emphasised the need to develop a suite of indicators that can be applied to assess SSM; specific measures such as Visual Soil Evaluation, Soil Quality Assessment, and erosion assessment were suggested. Lack of clarity about stakeholders and governance: There were a number of comments about the need to clarify the stakeholders this document is targeted at. This is also linked to concerns about governance – policy instruments to increase adoption of SSM have to be targeted at the relevant stakeholder. Expand SSM approaches beyond Conservation Agriculture: There were a wide range of SSM measures beyond Conservation Agriculture (CA) suggested by commentators. There were also concerns that the zero-order draft had been too negative about CA and that it had been too positive about CA. Concerns about the voluntary nature of the Guidelines: Several commentators expressed the hope that the guidelines could be made more binding rather than voluntary. There were a large number of suggestions for concepts that should be added or highlighted in the VGSSM. Some of those that were endorsed by multiple commentators were: Trade-offs: Societies need to make choices about the ecological services offered by soils, and these should be highlighted in the document; this links the definition of SSM more with the classical definition of sustainability. Soil resistance and resilience: These related concepts are mentioned in the document but should be promoted as the basis for SSM assessment. Land Capability and Land Use Incapability Classification: It was noted that degradation occurs when land use is not linked to land capability. This is also linked to the governance question raised by others – who decides on the use of the soil? Soils and climate regulation: Several commentators felt that the guidelines were weak on the link between SSM and climate regulation. Biodiversity and SSM: The section on protection of biodiversity was felt to be particularly weak, although the difficulty of assessment was also acknowledged. Role of soil structure and SSM: Several commentators felt that the role of soil structure needed to be highlighted. An integrated soil-sediment-water system approach should be used: The very strong link between SSM and water resources was emphasised by many commentators. |