Soil fertility in the EU taxonomy for the construction of new buildings
When soils are used for construction, all their ecosystem services are irreversibly lost. The European Commission has implemented various policies to reduce the loss of soils due to sealing, and this objective is integrated into the EU taxonomy for sustainable activities. In the delegated acts, specific criteria are defined to screen whether the building of new constructions can be considered environmentally sustainable. One of these criteria is that new constructions are not built on arable and crop land with a moderate to high level of soil fertility, and reference is made to the EU LUCAS survey with a hyperlink to the LUCAS project on the ESDAC website (https://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu/projects/lucas). Nevertheless, the data available in LUCAS soil do currently not provide a classification of soil fertility for the EU taxonomy regulation.
This report presents an overview of national legislations that classify agricultural land for spatial planning purposes, as well as EU and global methods and products (i.e. maps) to classify agricultural land. The advantages and disadvantages of these approaches as potential candidates for the EU taxonomy regulation criterion on soil fertility and new constructions are discussed. Considering recent developments in EU soil policies, the report proposes a new criterion for building new constructions on arable land that is better aligned with the European Commission’s ambition of reaching no net land take by 2050.
VAN EYNDE Elise;
YUNTA MEZQUITA Felipe;
PANAGOS Panos;
JONES Arwyn;
2024-08-01
Publications Office of the European Union
JRC135858
978-92-68-18736-4 (online),
1831-9424 (online),
EUR 31989,
OP KJ-NA-31-989-EN-N (online),
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC135858,
10.2760/25010 (online),
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