Climate Change,Human Rights,and Soil Security: The Wider ICJ Advisory Opinion Nexus?

Abstract

The International Court of Justice's (ICJ) 23 July 2025 Advisory Opinion (AO) on climate change marks a turning point in international law, clarifying that environmental protection is a prerequisite for the enjoyment of fundamental human rights. This contribution situates that AO within a neglected but indispensable domain: the governance of soils. It argues that the court's articulation of states’ obligations to safeguard the climate and human rights necessarily extends to the protection of soils – the terrestrial foundation of food, water, and ecological stability. Reframing soil as a living system rather than an inert substrate, this contribution argues for recognising an emerging human right to healthy soil as integral to human and ecological security. It interprets the ICJ's AO as a legal foundation for soil-related obligations, encompassing prevention, regulation, remediation, and cooperation, within existing frameworks of international human rights and the environment. Through an ecocentric lens, it explores how soil can evolve from property object to rights-bearing entity and examines pathways for institutional innovation, including a global soil convention and a specialised environmental chamber under the ICJ. In doing so, this contribution aligns ethical insight with legal necessity, contending that justice for both people and the planet depends on securing the dignity of the Earth's most fundamental yet least protected resource – its living soil.

“Environments are constituted in life, not just in thought, and it is only because we live in an environment that we can think at all.” ¹

Introduction

Across regions, all nations are experiencing unprecedented and worsening environmental degradation. ² In diplomatic fora, many still profess uncertainty about when and how their legal obligations require them to safeguard life on Earth. ³ As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emphasises, states jointly depend on a “global system consisting of five major components: the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the lithosphere, and the biosphere, and the interactions between them.” ⁴ Current projections indicate a roughly 80% likelihood that, by 2030, global warming will exceed the 1.5 °C threshold pledged in 2015. ⁵ Exceedance at this scale is expected to drive lethal heat and humidity, large-scale losses of flora and fauna, food insecurity, collapse of marine ecosystems, climate-displaced migration, and abrupt tipping points that radically alter human and natural systems. ⁶

On 23 July 2025, the ICJ issued its long-awaited AO on states’ obligations concerning climate change – a watershed moment for international law and global justice. ⁷ While much of the commentary following the AO has naturally focused on climate change and atmospheric emissions, this contribution invites a deeper reflection on the often-overlooked foundations of life itself: the soils beneath our feet. Estimates suggest that soils may harbour up to ∼59% of the world's species. ⁸ A single handful of soil can contain more microorganisms than there are people on the planet. ⁹ A cubic metre of soil can hold more than 900 litres of water, helping buffer crops against droughts and extreme weather events. ¹⁰ With the global population projected to exceed nine billion by 2050, and food demand expected to rise by up to 100% in low-income regions, the challenge of maintaining soil productivity without further degradation is immense. ¹¹ Yet soil health remains the “silent casualty” of humanity's planetary crisis, threatened by a wide array of human activities, including unsustainable agriculture, pollution, land sealing, over-extraction, and poor waste management, that jeopardise food production, contaminate surface and groundwater, and undermine progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). ¹² An area of soil the size of a football field is eroded roughly every five seconds. ¹³

Soil protection is fundamental to human security and survival, not merely because soil sustains the global food system, but because it constitutes the planet's second-largest carbon sink after the oceans. ¹⁴ As the most vital form of natural capital, productive land and fertile soils are indispensable to human well-being, particularly for rural and subsistence communities whose livelihoods depend directly on the health of their soils. ¹⁵ In the context of escalating climate crises, the protection of soils must be recognised not as an agricultural or environmental issue alone, but as a matter of human survival and justice.

Despite their centrality, soils have long occupied the margins of international law. ¹⁶ They are viewed as local, stationary resources rather than as transboundary and intergenerational systems of life. As Lacy opines, it is “perhaps because the soil resources are less glamorous than endangered species, less conspicuous than toxically polluted waters or clear-cut forests, or less politically divisive than cowburnt rangelands.” ¹⁷ Instead, this “dirt” has earned the honour of being the “most underappreciated natural resource.” ¹⁸

This article situates the ICJ-AO within this emerging terrain. It argues that the opinion's articulation of states’ obligations to safeguard the climate and human rights also extends – by implication and necessity – to the protection of soils. The discussion unfolds in four parts: first, it expands the concept of human security to include soil security; second, it interprets the ICJ's opinion as a basis for soil-related obligations within existing human rights frameworks; third, it reimagines soil protection through an ecocentric legal lens; and finally, it calls for a global soil instrument and/or a dedicated judicial mechanism under the ICJ.

Human and soil security: need for global legal protection

Human security extends far beyond the mere absence of armed conflict. It encompasses protecting people's fundamental freedoms and satisfying their essential needs – food, health, water, and a safe environment – so they can live in dignity. ¹⁹ It rests on the premise that the threats undermining human well-being today are not limited to war or violence but also include environmental degradation, climate change, and the depletion of natural resources. In 1987, the Brundtland Commission, in its landmark report Our Common Future, captured this interdependence by observing that “The Earth is one, but the world is not.” ²⁰ This insight remains profoundly relevant: while the planet's ecological systems are interconnected and indivisible, the political and economic order governing them remains fragmented. Within this broad framework, soils sustain food systems on which nearly 95% of humanity depends. ²¹ The degradation of soil is therefore not only an environmental problem but also a direct assault on human security itself.

Food security, long defined by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) as a state in which “all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food,” rests ultimately upon soil security. ²² Its four dimensions, availability, access, utilisation, and stability, are all mediated by soil conditions. ²³ Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the vulnerability of global supply chains has intensified, heightening food insecurity in multiple ways, including shortages of key agricultural inputs, labour disruptions caused by health crises, and the deterioration of soil quality linked to unsustainable land and soil management practices. ²⁴ More than two billion people are already experiencing food insecurity. ²⁵ Meeting rising food demand will require intensifying production on land already in use, potentially pushing forests, wetlands, and grasslands into cultivation, further degrading biodiversity and key ecosystem functions. ²⁶

Approximately one-third of the world's agricultural land is degraded. ²⁷ At the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos, United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken characterised soil as “at the root of many pressing national-security challenges,” noting that “if you get the soil right, you have your agricultural foundation for the future.” ²⁸ Similarly, at COP28, soil health was identified as a key determinant of agricultural resilience and transformation of the food system. ²⁹ Across Africa, the 2024 African Fertiliser and Soil Health Summit adopted the Nairobi Declaration, committing states to “reverse land degradation and restore soil health on at least 30% of degraded soil” through measures such as repurposed incentives for smallholders, integrated soil–water conservation across landscapes, targeted irrigation to improve nutrient-use efficiency and climate resilience, stronger research and extension networks, and promoting organic practices alongside conventional agriculture by 2034. ³⁰

The interdependence between soil health, biodiversity, and ecosystem functioning cannot be overstated. Biodiversity and well-functioning ecosystems underwrite nature's contributions to people, from climate regulation and nutrient and water cycling to the provision of clean water, food, medicines, and cultural identity. ³¹ Biodiversity loss and climate change interact and amplify each other, undermining ecosystem resilience and weakening all elements of this interconnected system. ³² Healthy soils are central to this balance, sustaining fisheries, forests, and agricultural systems through pollination, pest control, and nutrient renewal. ³³ Conversely, unsustainable agrarian expansion and land conversion, often driven by rising affluence, accelerate biodiversity loss, degrade water quality, and increase risks of pathogens and greenhouse gas emissions. ³⁴

The recognition that environmental degradation undermines fundamental rights has deep roots in international law. Principle 1 of the 1972 Stockholm Declaration proclaimed that “man is both creature and moulder of his environment (…) both aspects of man's environment, the natural and the man-made, are essential to his well-being and to the enjoyment of basic human rights – even the right to life itself.” ³⁵ The 1992 Rio Declaration reaffirmed that human beings are “entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature.” ³⁶ Together, these texts articulate a progressive understanding of environmental quality, including soil integrity, as a precondition for human rights.

Soil security, as defined by the Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils, refers to the sustained maintenance and enhancement of global soil resources to ensure they continue to provide food, fibre, freshwater, energy, biodiversity conservation, and climate regulation. ³⁷ Lal distinguishes between soil quality and soil health: the former describes what soil does – its functional performance – while the latter captures what soil is – a finite, living, dynamic resource whose vitality underpins all terrestrial ecosystems. ³⁸ Soil security thus integrates ecological and social dimensions, aligning with the broader human-security agenda. ³⁹ The two concepts converge in a simple truth: human survival depends on protecting the thin, living layer of Earth that sustains us. ⁴⁰ Soils are effectively non-renewable on human timescales: they form at millimetres per century, and restoring degraded soils to their prior condition can take about 500 years to rebuild just ∼2.5 cm of topsoil. ⁴¹ The economic stakes are equally stark: soil erosion alone strips an estimated 75 billion tonnes of soil each year, resulting in losses of roughly USD 400 billion. ⁴² As National Geographic puts it, soil degradation is “the root of all socioeconomic problems.” ⁴³

Armed conflict further deepens the interdependence between soil security and human security. Today, more than 100 armed conflicts are active worldwide, with the Middle East and North Africa hosting over 45, Africa more than 35, and numerous military occupations in Europe and Asia. ⁴⁴ Warfare contaminates soils with explosive residues, heavy metals, hydrocarbons, and radionuclides; Africa alone is estimated to contain 37 million landmines. ⁴⁵ The war in Ukraine, once a major supplier of grains and sunflower oil to Africa and the Middle East, has demonstrated how damaged soils, contaminated farmland, destroyed ports, and disrupted exports can escalate global food insecurity, driving up prices and endangering millions of people in import-dependent regions. ⁴⁶ Soil degradation caused by conflict thus becomes a direct vector of human insecurity. ⁴⁷

From a legal perspective, recognising soil as an essential component of human security entails corresponding duties for states and the international community. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment has identified core obligations of states to prevent significant soil pollution, to rehabilitate contaminated sites, and to establish binding standards for soil quality. ⁴⁸ National and regional courts are increasingly interpreting environmental rights to encompass the protection of soil. In the Owino Uhuru case, the Environment and Land Court of Kenya held that state authorities and private entities had violated residents’ right to a healthy environment by contaminating soil with lead from lead smelting, ordering remediation and compensation. ⁴⁹ Similar jurisprudence in Latin America, Europe, and Asia reflects a growing consensus that polluted or degraded soils constitute a breach of fundamental rights. ⁵⁰

In legal and policy discourse, the imperative of soil protection aligns directly with the principles of sustainable development, which require that ecological integrity and human welfare be pursued together. Meeting humanity's six existential environmental challenges – food, water, and energy security; climate stability; biodiversity conservation; and human health – depends fundamentally on soil. ⁵¹ Some scholars now propose that soil security itself should be recognised as a seventh global challenge. ⁵² Soil security encompasses five interrelated pillars: condition, capability, capital, connectivity, and codification, which together determine a society's capacity to maintain soil functions over time. ⁵³ It also resonates with the planetary boundaries framework, which defines the safe operating space for humanity. ⁵⁴ Crossing soil-related boundaries through erosion, nutrient imbalance, or organic-carbon loss destabilises not only ecological systems but also the political and economic foundations of human security. ⁵⁵

As Nobel laureate Rattan Lal observes, “people are a mirror image of the soil they live upon: their health is also equally affected.” ⁵⁶ Reframing soil protection within the broader human-security paradigm reaffirms that the right to food, water, health, and even peace are contingent upon the integrity of this living foundation. ⁵⁷ It follows that the protection of soil should be understood as an integral part of the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment – indeed, as the material manifestation of the right to life and human dignity.

The ICJ advisory opinion as a cross-cutting legal pivot

“Together, international law and national legal systems can, but do not yet, guide and mandate an end to the conduct that destroys the environment.” ⁵⁸ For decades, the international plane treated soil as an afterthought, referenced tangentially but rarely the subject of direct obligations. Even where frameworks carry obvious relevance – 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (especially 2 on zero hunger and 15 life on land), the UN Convention to Combat Desertification's (UNCCD) land-degradation neutrality (LDN), the Convention on Biological Diversity's (CBD) conservation duties, the Ramsar Convention's wetland protections, or the Paris Agreement's balance of sources and sinks – the legal connection to soil has often been mediated by policy language and soft law. ⁵⁹ Climate processes have gradually tightened those links [from Kyoto's land use, land use change, and forestry (LULUCF) to the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture], but soils remain under-specified as legal objects of protection. ⁶⁰

The UNCCD collapses “soil” into the broader category of “land”, which obscures the distinctive scientific, ecological, and legal attributes of soil as a resource. Land is generally understood as a socio-political construct – farmland, rangeland, or forests – categories defined through human use and governance. ⁶¹ Soil, by contrast, is a complex bio-geophysical system that, although sometimes metres deep, is typically considered only in terms of its uppermost 30 cm; its significance is literally and figuratively buried. ⁶² Treating soil merely as a subset of land obscures this complexity. A review of updated Nationally Determined Contributions as of 14 November 2025 shows that soils are primarily addressed implicitly through practice-based measures rather than explicitly as a standalone priority. ⁶³ Most parties identify land-use and agricultural interventions that have direct or indirect impacts on soil health, but rarely frame these measures under a coherent “soil health” heading. ⁶⁴

It is precisely here that the recent wave of International Courts and Tribunals’ (ICTs) ⁶⁵ advisory jurisprudence, first at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), ⁶⁶ then at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), ⁶⁷ and now at the ICJ, assumes pivotal significance. Advisory opinions are non-binding interpretations issued by ICTs at the request of authorised bodies. ⁶⁸ Although they do not resolve disputes between parties, they offer authoritative guidance on complex questions of international law and often shape subsequent practice. ⁶⁹

Today's climate crisis, described as “an existential problem of planetary proportions that imperils all forms of life and the very health of our planet”, demands legal clarity commensurate with its scale. ⁷⁰ In 2023, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adopted Resolution A/77/L.58, initiated by Vanuatu and co-sponsored by 132 developed and developing countries, which formally requested an AO from the ICJ on the legal duties of states regarding climate change. ⁷¹ The UNGA asked the ICJ to clarify two things: (a) What duties do states have under international law to protect the climate system and other parts of the environment from human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions, for the benefit of both current and future generations? (b) What legal consequences follow when states, through action or inaction, cause significant harm to the climate system or other environmental components, specifically with respect to: (i) Other states — especially small island developing states — that, given their geography and level of development, are injured, specially affected, or particularly vulnerable to climate impacts; and (ii) Peoples and individuals, both now and in the future, who are affected by the adverse impacts of climate change? ⁷²

In its AO, the ICJ adopts a method of systemic integration (in the sense of Articles 31–32 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties), refusing to read climate obligations in isolation from biodiversity, desertification, the marine environment, and human rights regimes. ⁷³ The court characterises climate change as an “urgent and existential” threat to human beings and ecosystems, and it frames environmental protection as integral to the enjoyment of multiple human rights, including the rights to life, health, food, water, housing, and an adequate standard of living. ⁷⁴ The court stated that “the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment results from the interdependence between human rights and the protection of the environment”. ⁷⁵ In his Separate Opinion, Judge Bogdan Auresco argued “that the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment has already become a norm of customary international law”. ⁷⁶

Two aspects of the opinion are especially consequential for soil. First, the court's articulation of due diligence resets the baseline of state conduct. States must take “all appropriate measures,” commensurate with risk and capacity, to prevent significant environmental harm, to protect life-support systems, and to regulate private actors whose activities pose foreseeable risks. ⁷⁷ That obligation is operationalised through the full suite of domestic instruments – comprehensive legislation, competent administrative authorities, and effective enforcement – and, critically, through environmental impact assessment (EIA). ⁷⁸ Because EIA is a well-established duty of customary international law, and nearly all states maintain national EIA regimes, due diligence requires ex ante and iterative assessments that identify, evaluate, and mitigate significant environmental effects; facilitate prior notification and consultation where transboundary harm is plausible; and ensure public participation and disclosure. ⁷⁹ Where the scientific evidence is clear and the risk of harm apparent, the standard of due diligence – and thus the rigour, scope, and precautionary content of such assessments – tightens for all states. ⁸⁰

Applied to soils, this entails maintaining the core functions on which human rights depend (food production, water filtration, climate regulation) through comprehensive environmental and soil impact assessments (SIA) at both project and policy levels. In practice, many EIA regimes still treat “land and soils” narrowly, often reducing analysis to agricultural land classifications, with occasional attention to the physical resilience of soils when stripped, stored, and reused. ⁸¹ This productivity-centric lens overlooks soils’ wider life-support roles. SIAs complement EIAs by focusing specifically on these functions and by integrating cumulative and transboundary impacts into decision-making. ⁸² Failure to avoid foreseeable degradation thus breaches not only environmental responsibilities but also the state's human rights obligations. ⁸³ Whether the violation concerns the duty to prevent significant environmental harm or failures under climate-change treaties and related instruments, responsibility is assessed under the well-established rules of customary international law on state responsibility. Because many of these obligations are erga omnes (and, where relevant, erga omnes partes), any state may invoke responsibility for a breach in the interest of the international community as a whole, including seeking cessation, guarantees of non-repetition, and reparation. ⁸⁴

The ICJ was unequivocal about interstate obligations: because climate change is a common concern of humankind, cooperation is not optional but a pressing legal duty aimed at achieving equitable outcomes. ⁸⁵ In fulfilling this duty, states must be guided by cross-cutting principles of international law that inform the interpretation and application of relevant treaty and customary norms, namely, sustainable development, common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, equity (including intergenerational equity), and the precautionary approach. ⁸⁶ In her Separate Opinion, Judge Xue Hanqin develops the principle of sustainable development, concurring that climate change presents “an unprecedented challenge and threat to all States.” ⁸⁷ She further observes that agreement on the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs can serve as a unifying force, creating a synergy between the global response to climate change and sustainable development objectives. ⁸⁸

Sustainable development, in the context of soil, means using soil resources in ways that meet today's needs, such as food security and safe habitation, without degrading their ability to provide those same benefits (and related ecosystem needs) for future generations. ⁸⁹ Soil pollution is also inherently a transboundary issue. Persistent contaminants, including heavy metals, radionuclides, and persistent organic pollutants, are routinely conveyed across frontiers via long-range atmospheric deposition, transboundary watercourses and aquifers, migratory species, and the international trade of food, feed, and other soil-derived commodities. ⁹⁰

In addition, soils themselves can become airborne. Disturbed or degraded soils release particulate matter and dust plumes that travel across borders, carrying both mineral particles and adsorbed pollutants. ⁹¹ Sand and dust storms, driven by drought, desertification, and poor land management, are among the most visible examples, but smaller-scale emissions from agriculture, construction, and quarrying similarly degrade air quality. ⁹² In this way, degraded soils not only undermine local food systems and public health; they also interact with climate change to drive human mobility. While climate change is widely recognised as a significant catalyst for environmental migration, soil and land degradation operate as powerful risk multipliers, eroding communities’ capacity to absorb climate shocks and deepening food insecurity. ⁹³

The World Bank projects that by 2050, up to 216 million people across six regions – Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, South Asia, North Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe and Central Asia – could be forced to move within their own countries due to climate impacts. ⁹⁴ Such internal displacement will, in turn, place additional pressure on cross-border migration as soils are exhausted, resources are diminished, and rural livelihoods collapse. ⁹⁵

Secondly, by construing climate-related obligations in light of biodiversity and desertification treaties, the court implicitly recognises that soil functions are juridically embedded across instruments. ⁹⁶ If obligations to mitigate and adapt are to be meaningful, they must extend to land and soils as sinks, buffers, and habitats; if obligations to conserve biodiversity are to be fulfilled, they must include the below-ground biota and the edaphic processes that sustain it; if obligations to prevent marine pollution are to be honoured, they must address sediment and nutrient run-off at source – i.e., in soils. The opinion thus supplies a bridge from climate and human rights to soil: what the court says about the climate system's protection as a condition for rights must, by necessity, include those terrestrial subsystems without which climate protection and rights realisation are impossible.

The court aligns with, and fortifies, the now-consolidated understanding that a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is a precondition for the enjoyment of protected rights. The International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights’ (ICESCR) Article 12 (right to health), read with the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights’ (CESCR) General Comment No. 14, already requires states to refrain from unlawfully polluting air, water, and soil; ⁹⁷ Article 25(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and Article 11 of the ICESCR recognise the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food; and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) Article 24(2)(c) anchors duties to prevent disease and malnutrition, including by addressing environmental determinants. ⁹⁸ The CESCR, in General Comment No. 12, stresses that realising the right to food requires sustainable management of natural resources and equitable access to food systems. ⁹⁹ Non-binding instruments reinforce these commitments, notably the 1974 Universal Declaration on the Eradication of Hunger and Malnutrition, the 1996 Rome Declaration on World Food Security, the 2004 Voluntary Guidelines on the right to adequate food in the context of national food security, the Five Rome Principles for Sustainable Global Food Security (2009), and the FAO Committee on World Food Security (CFS) Framework for Action for Food Security and Nutrition in Protracted Crises (2015), which links food security, human rights, and environmental protection. ¹⁰⁰ Ultimately, soil protection should be understood through the lens of the public trust doctrine, as part of the commons (res communis) in which all humankind holds a common interest. ¹⁰¹

In line with the court's reasoning, the protection of global environmental media such as the atmosphere, oceans, and soils gives rise to obligations erga omnes, reflecting duties owed to the international community as a whole. ¹⁰² The ICJ opinion does not create new rights; rather, it clarifies that existing human rights and environmental obligations must be interpreted and applied to safeguard the ecological foundations upon which those rights depend – soil, prominently among them. The court also recalls the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) definition of the biosphere as comprising “all ecosystems and living organisms,” as well as associated dead organic material, expressly including soil organic matter. ¹⁰³ It also resonates with the General Assembly's early recognition, in Resolution 2398 (XXIII) (1968), of “the continuing and accelerating impairment of the quality of the human environment” caused by, inter alia, erosion and other forms of soil deterioration, with consequential harms to human well-being, dignity, and the enjoyment of fundamental human rights. ¹⁰⁴ The court also recalled the Secretary-General's report of 11 September 2009, which emphasised that climate change threatens food security and human health and increases exposure to extreme events. ¹⁰⁵ In the same vein, the court notes that climate change is “devastating agriculture,” a finding that necessarily implicates the role of soil. ¹⁰⁶

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Commission on Environmental Law (WCEL), in its submission to the ICJ, affirmed that international human rights law guarantees both procedural and substantive environmental rights. ¹⁰⁷ Responding to questions from Judges Cleveland and Aurescu, the Commission highlighted that access to environmental information is a core procedural right. ¹⁰⁸ Yet, as it observed, essential data, such as inventories of fossil-fuel subsidies and production plans, remain largely undisclosed. ¹⁰⁹ Extending this reasoning to the terrestrial sphere, a comparable deficit exists in relation to soil. Especially in the Global South, and notably across Africa, soil information remains fragmented and outdated. ¹¹⁰ Many national soil maps date back decades, and data on soil health, erosion and salinisation risks, or contamination levels are either unavailable, unreliable, or inaccessible to the public. The absence of transparent, up-to-date soil information systems deprives communities of their right to know, undermines informed participation in environmental decision-making, and weakens accountability for land and resource governance.

From a soil-security perspective, the WCEL's argument implies a correlative duty of transparency and participation regarding soil health. Access to soil data is crucial for monitoring compliance with human rights and environmental obligations. Procedurally, therefore, states must not only disclose soil-related information but also incorporate SIAs within EIA frameworks, ensuring early consultation and iterative review where activities may impair soil functions. Substantively, the WCEL observed that the right to a healthy environment operates both as an independent right and as an implicit dimension of other rights, including the rights to life, health, food, water, housing, property, and cultural identity. ¹¹¹ This dual character extends naturally to soils. Healthy soil underpins all these rights: it sustains the food that nourishes life, filters and stores the water essential for health, stabilises ecosystems that moderate climate, and anchors cultural and spiritual practices. ¹¹² Degraded soils, by contrast, erode the material foundations of these rights. Accordingly, the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment necessarily entails a right to healthy soil – both procedurally, through access to soil information and participation in its governance, and substantively, through the preservation of soil's ecological functions.

While not adopting every formulation verbatim, the AO closely tracks and, in places, substantially relies on the IUCN WCEL submission's core arguments and architecture. ¹¹³ In this sense, by affirming legal consequences for failures to protect life-support systems – cessation, non-repetition, and forms of reparation proportionate to harm – the opinion opens the door to claims in which soil degradation is a cognisable head of injury linked to climate-related breaches. Where agricultural, extractive, or industrial activities foreseeably release pollutants into soils; where land-use decisions drive large-scale losses of soil carbon stocks or desertification; or where permitting authorities neglect precaution in the face of uncertain but potentially severe edaphic harms, the elements of internationally wrongful conduct are not hard to imagine. The opinion's emphasis on capabilities and differentiated burdens aligns with implementation: states must tailor standards, monitoring, and finance to their specific circumstances, but all remain bound by the same architecture of prevention, cooperation, and progressive realisation. ¹¹⁴

Issued as global mean surface temperature reached 1.55 °C above pre-industrial levels in 2024, and amid a sharp rise in climate litigation, with ∼3,000 cases filed across nearly 60 countries in June 2025, this is the ICJ's most consequential climate ruling to date, resetting expectations for state conduct and accountability. ¹¹⁵ It gathers dispersed norms and recasts them as mutually reinforcing duties to safeguard the biophysical conditions of a dignified life. Once that step is taken, the path to soil is not speculative but straightforward. Because the integrity of soils is a condition for the enjoyment of protected rights and for the effectiveness of climate and biodiversity regimes, soil protection follows as an obligation of due diligence under international law. That obligation entails standards, surveillance, and sanctions; entails remediation and restoration; and involves equitable support for those most vulnerable to soil insecurity – smallholders, indigenous peoples, and marginalised communities. The court did not need to pronounce a freestanding “right to healthy soils” to generate these consequences. By clarifying the legal grammar of human rights and environmental protection in a warming world, it has already done the heavier work: it has made soils legally visible.

From dirt to dignity: reimagining soil through the lens of soil rights

To reframe soil within an ecocentric register is not to romanticise “nature” but to recognise the ontological error at the heart of much environmental law: the reduction of soils to an inert substratum for human projects. Soil is not mere “dirt” or “land”. It is a densely populated, metabolically active, self-organising system – what many scientists aptly call the “living skin” of the Earth. ¹¹⁶ Ingold's reflections on the relationality of life help illuminate this point: humans and nonhumans co-constitute one another; forests, soils, and rivers are not passive backdrops but active participants in the continuum of life. ¹¹⁷ Recognising soil as a living entity compels a rethinking of its place in law.

This insistence is neither novel nor culturally parochial. Multiple African and indigenous jurisprudences conceive of soil as animate kin, an ancestor, or a mother – an ontological stance that grounds duties of respect, restraint, and care. ¹¹⁸ As one indigenous voice puts it, “discussing soil security and soil governance without reference to the earth as our Mother would be an impossible task (…) when you speak of a Mother you speak to the whole of Her.” ¹¹⁹ Concepts in African customary law that link land, lineage, and spiritual guardianship, the Māori account of Papa-tū-ā-nuku as Earth-ancestress and whenua as both land and placenta, and Latin American cosmovisions in which soil mediates relations among the living and the dead, all converge on a normative proposition: soils are not mere assets but relational beings with which humans stand in reciprocal obligation. ¹²⁰ These epistemologies do not deny human use; they demand attunement – use that preserves soils’ powers to regenerate and support the community of life. Read alongside contemporary science, such perspectives provide a robust ethical base for legal reform that refuses to collapse soils into “land” or into a fungible input of production. ¹²¹

The ICJ in its AO referenced the Rio Declaration's call for life “in harmony with nature,” but did not engage with the later UNGA resolutions elaborating that concept, which have served as a springboard for the Assembly's tentative forays into “rights of nature.” ¹²² This compares with the AO of 29 May 2025 by the IACtHR on the climate emergency, in response to a request from Colombia and Chile, which found that the right to a “healthy climate relates not only to present and future generations, but also to Nature, conceived as the physical and biological foundation of life. Protection of the global climate system requires safeguarding the integrity of ecosystems and the living and non-living components.” ¹²³ Continuing to state that, “the right to a healthy environment protects the components of the environment, such as forests, rivers, and seas, as legal rights in themselves, even in the absence of certainty or evidence of the risk to the individual.” ¹²⁴ This follows from La Oroya v Peru, where the IACtHR held that states are “obliged to protect nature and the environment not only because of the benefits they provide to humanity, but also because of their importance to the other living organisms with which we share the planet”. ¹²⁵

Against this backdrop, the concept of “Soil Rights” serves as a heuristic for two related yet distinct moves. First, it names a family of substantive guarantees about soil – minimum integrity thresholds for structure, organic carbon, biodiversity, and contamination levels – without which core human rights (food, water, health, culture, and the clean, healthy, and sustainable environment) cannot be realised. ¹²⁶ This is the rights-about-soil pathway: it remains anchored in human-rights law yet refuses to treat soils as externally contingent. Secondly, a more ambitious strand proposes rights of soil, recognising soils as rights-bearing subjects capable of being represented by guardians in judicial fora, with claims to exist, regenerate, and perform ecological functions free from significant impairment. ¹²⁷

The draft Rights of Soil Model Law, developed by the Centre for Democratic and Environmental Rights (CDER) and released at the 2022 Soil, Not Oil Conference in Petaluma, California, represents one of the first attempts to extend the rights-of-nature framework specifically to soils. Conceived as a template municipal ordinance, it recognises the soil ecosystem as a rights-bearing entity with legally enforceable rights “to exist, flourish, and maintain soil health.” ¹²⁸ If adopted, the ordinance would impose a legally binding duty of care on governments, landowners, and corporations; prohibit activities that significantly impair soil functions (including synthetic chemical use and practices causing erosion); and allow legal actions to be brought in the name of the soil ecosystem itself, with courts empowered to order restoration to pre-damage conditions. Although drafted for the City of Petaluma, Sonoma County, California, US, the model law has not been formally enacted. Petaluma, however, has taken steps that echo the model law's underlying philosophy. In 2024, the City Council approved a city-wide Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Policy requiring regenerative land-management practices on municipal property, restricting synthetic pesticide use, and expanding organic-only approaches even to city-owned golf courses – a first in Sonoma County. ¹²⁹ Earlier, Petaluma issued a symbolic proclamation recognising the “rights of soil,” and it has pioneered regenerative grazing to maintain open spaces and improve soil fertility. A different, more conventional pathway emerges in the 2018 European Union Strategy for the Alpine Region (EUSALP) Action Group 6 Declaration on Sustainable Land Use and Soil Protection: Joining Forces for Nature, People, and the Economy. ¹³⁰ The Declaration does not recognise soil as a rights-bearing subject. Instead, it provides a comprehensive statement of soil's centrality to human life, affirming that “soils are the basis of our life and a precondition for all human activities”, and frames land ownership as carrying obligations as well as rights, particularly in light of soil's vulnerability and limited regenerative capacity. The Declaration calls for cross-border cooperation, harmonised data collection, coordinated monitoring, prudent spatial planning, participatory governance, and better implementation of existing Alpine Convention protocols. ¹³¹ This represents a stewardship-based governance model that strengthens duties toward soil without adopting a rights-of-nature vocabulary.

At the conceptual core of this “soil rights” reimagining lies the tension between anthropocentrism and ecocentrism – two worldviews that have long shaped environmental thought and law. The anthropocentric view assesses the value of soil based on its service to humanity, specifically its capacity to yield crops, sustain livelihoods, and support development. ¹³² By contrast, an ecocentric or Earth-centred ethic – articulated most profoundly in Earth Jurisprudence – recognises soil as part of a living, self-regulating Earth community with intrinsic worth beyond human use. ¹³³ Earth Jurisprudence rejects the notion that nature exists merely as property; instead, it calls for governance systems aligned with the laws and limits of the Earth itself. ¹³⁴ In practice, however, soil governance cannot be entirely detached from human concerns. Thus, a hybrid model emerges, one that bridges the gap between anthropocentric and ecocentric ethics. It acknowledges soil's instrumental role in human well-being while affirming its independent right to exist, regenerate, and perform its ecological functions. This integrative lens aligns moral duty with ecological necessity: caring for soil becomes both an act of self-preservation and a gesture of reverence toward the Earth's living fabric.

Institutionally, multiple routes are available. Constitutional entrenchment (environmental or soil-specific clauses) can anchor the norm; framework soil legislation can specify standards, indicators, monitoring, and progressive-realisation targets with minimum cores (e.g., bans on the most hazardous soil pollutants; baseline national soil information systems; and protection of prime/critical soils). ¹³⁵ Administrative law can hard-wire ex ante SIAs for projects with plausible edaphic effects; civil liability can operationalise the polluter-pays principle; land-use planning can internalise soil-function maps, buffer zones, and erosion-control baselines; agricultural policy can redirect incentives toward agroecological and regenerative practices; and public finance can underwrite remediation and smallholder transitions.

Internationally, Motion 007 on Soil Security Law, adopted by the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Abu Dhabi in 2025, signals a growing global interest in a comprehensive legal framework for soil security. ¹³⁶ The proposal received broad support – 87% of states (108 votes in favour) and 95% of NGOs (609 votes in favour). The motion reaffirms that healthy soils are integral to achieving the SDGs, especially SDG 15. It recognises soil security as the responsible stewardship and conservation of soils to maintain their capacity to perform essential functions, deliver key ecosystem and biophysical services, and guard against emerging threats. By calling for a dedicated global legal framework, Motion 007 bridges the gap between science, policy, and law to address the urgent degradation of the world's soils caused by unsustainable land use, pollution, and climate impacts. This collective achievement not only strengthens the legal recognition of soils as essential to life on Earth, but it also sets the stage for a new era of international cooperation toward a binding global convention on soil security. ¹³⁷

This is why the “from dirt to dignity” pivot is not rhetorical flourish but legal necessity: by moving soils from the periphery of environmental management to the centre of rights and duties, the law becomes better at doing what human-rights law says it is for – securing the material foundations of a life worthy of human beings while honouring the communities of life with whom we share the Earth. As the ICJ concluded in its AO, “(a)bove all, a lasting and complete solution requires human will and wisdom- at the individual, social and political levels- to change our habits, comforts and current way of life in order to secure a future for ourselves and those yet to come.” ¹³⁸

Towards an international soil security regime

Bruce has argued that “[i]t is the job of international lawyers to devise creative and meaningful solutions to real-world problems and to make the pieces of international law work as a system.” ¹³⁹ The arc of international environmental law is bending toward an integrated grammar of prevention, cooperation, and rights. ¹⁴⁰ Recent advisory jurisprudence has crystallised the view that environmental protection is indispensable to the enjoyment of fundamental human rights; the ICJ-AO makes this plain, characterising climate change as an “urgent and existential” threat, grounding state duties in treaty and custom, and clarifying the legal consequences of failures to safeguard Earth's life-support systems. Once that frame is accepted, soil moves from the periphery to the centre.

The case for institutional innovation is equally clear. Keller, Gurash, and Heri's argument for a “World Climate Court” illustrates how dispersed duties can be translated into enforceable standards by consolidating due diligence norms, opening standing to representative applicants, and tailoring remedies to loss, damage, and restoration – while managing fragmentation through judicial comity and structured dialogue. ¹⁴¹ Mutatis mutandis, soils require an analogous judicial venue: a specialised environmental chamber of the ICJ or a bespoke international environmental tribunal empowered to hear soil-related (not land) claims. Such a body would articulate baseline duties of prevention, precaution, and restoration toward soil ecosystems; recognise calibrated actio popularis or representative standing (including guardianship); order provisional measures to halt ongoing degradation; set evidentiary standards that integrate edaphic science (soil organic carbon, biodiversity, contamination, and function mapping) with rights impacts; and shape remedies that prioritise ecological repair, non-economic loss, and fair-share finance. Properly designed, this forum would convert the moral claim for soil into enforceable legal obligations, doing for the terrestrial substrate what international adjudication has begun to do for climate and oceans. There is already a Rights of Nature Tribunal – the civil-society-run International Rights of Nature Tribunal, launched in 2014 – that hears cases involving rivers, forests, and other ecosystems. ¹⁴² Its proceedings and “verdicts,” however, are non-binding; they carry moral and pedagogical weight but cannot compel states or corporations to comply. If soil were recognised as a rights-bearing entity, its claims could be brought before such a forum, but only for symbolic redress.

The political moment is unusually favourable. At the Pan-African Parliament (PAP)'s Sixth Ordinary Session in Midrand on 6 November 2025, members adopted the Model Law on Sustainable Soil Management in Africa on second reading, following first adoption in July and two additional regional consultations in September (Midrand, South Africa) and October (Cairo, Egypt). ¹⁴³ The instrument provides African Union Member States with a continent-tailored blueprint to harmonise soil governance, align with the LDN/SDGs, and operationalise due diligence duties across food, climate, and biodiversity policy. During the debate, Hon. Happymore Chidziva (Zimbabwe) emphasised the connection between soil health, climate change, and food security, arguing that Africa's fight against hunger and poverty is inextricably linked to how the continent manages its soils. “The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself,” he warned. ¹⁴⁴ Speaking on behalf of the PAP President, Fourth Vice-President Hon. Djidda Mamar Mahamat added: “Our soil is Africa's most valuable asset. We must protect it for our people and for generations to come, ensuring our soils remain fertile, productive, and sustainable in line with Agenda 2063.” ¹⁴⁵

In parallel, the European Union has finalised its first-ever Soil Monitoring Directive, formally adopted by the Council on 29 September 2025 and approved by the European Parliament on 23 October 2025, creating an EU-wide soil health monitoring framework aimed at achieving healthy soils by 2050, with Member States given three years to transpose it. ¹⁴⁶ This law mandates comparable soil data, contaminated-site remediation planning, and measures on land take and emerging contaminants, offering a regulatory benchmark for other regions.

On the diplomatic front, at the twentieth session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN), held in July 2025, African environment ministers adopted Decision AMCEN/20/Dec.1, which aims to Strengthen Soil Governance and Land Restoration in Africa. ¹⁴⁷ The Decision called upon the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), in collaboration with the FAO, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the African Union, and the Regional Economic Communities (RECs), to develop guidelines for a continental soil governance framework.

At the 2025 UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belém, Brazil (10–21 November 2025) – the so-called “Nature COP” – soil emerged as one of the most prominent themes across negotiations, side events, and media commentary. ¹⁴⁸ The British Society of Soil Science hosted a two-part webinar series, “Soils as a Pathway to Net Zero” and “The Role of Indigenous Peoples in Soil Health Management”, convening scientists, farmers, policymakers, and sustainability experts to explore how soil stewardship can cut emissions, enhance resilience, and direct equitable finance to frontline land stewards. ¹⁴⁹ The Gates Foundation announced a new climate-adaptation commitment to help smallholder farmers protect their livelihoods through soil-health interventions that restore degraded land, increase productivity, and reduce emissions. ¹⁵⁰ As COP30 concluded, several developments of direct relevance to regenerative agriculture and soil carbon sequestration were announced: the launch of the RAIZ (Resilient Agriculture Investment for Net-Zero Land Degradation) accelerator, backed by ten countries, to mobilise blended public–private finance for restoring degraded farmland at scale; over USD 9 billion in pledges under the Action Agenda on Regenerative Landscapes, which aims by 2030 to support conservation, restoration, and regenerative agriculture across 210 million hectares and 12 million farmers in more than 110 countries; the Brazil–UK Belém Declaration on Fertilisers, establishing work towards global standards for low-emissions fertilisers through a UNIDO–Hydrogen Council partnership and deploying AI-enabled digital tools to optimise nutrient application; a USD 5.4 million Rockefeller Foundation initiative linking regenerative agriculture and school-meal programmes, supporting twelve organisations working with family farmers to promote soil health, biodiversity, nutrition, and community resilience; a suite of AI and digital tools, including a new open-source agricultural AI model developed by Brazil, the UAE, CGIAR, Embrapa, and the Gates Foundation, alongside AIM for Scale, to deliver forecasting, crop-planning and risk analytics that enable climate-smart, soil-friendly farming practices; and a set of Amazon-focused measures, including Brazil's pledge of R$600 million for land-restoration and land-regularisation in the Legal Amazon and the Caminhos Verdes (Green Paths) project to strengthen territorial governance and restore degraded areas in close partnership with indigenous peoples and traditional communities. ¹⁵¹

A further sign of geopolitical alignment emerged at the 7th African Union–European Union Summit, whose 2025 Joint Declaration underscored a shared commitment to addressing the drivers of soil insecurity. ¹⁵² Paragraph 27 reaffirmed cooperation against terrorism, violent extremism, illicit exploitation of natural resources, and the continued threat of antipersonnel landmines – all of which contribute directly to land degradation and contaminate soils, especially in conflict-affected regions. Paragraphs 34 and 37 renewed the partners’ commitment to ambitious climate action under the Paris Agreement, to strengthening adaptation and resilience, and to implementing the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. The Declaration also emphasised support for national adaptation plans, climate-resilient systems, innovative finance, and knowledge exchange on carbon markets – elements essential for a just, well-resourced transition to sustainable soil management. Crucially, the Declaration does not treat environmental and soil-related vulnerabilities in isolation from the histories that produced many of them. It explicitly links sustainability and cooperation to the broader project of historical justice. In this spirit, Paragraph 39 acknowledges the African Union's 2025 Theme of the Year and the upcoming Decade of “Justice for Africans and People of African Descent Through Reparations”, recognising the enduring harms of slavery, colonialism, and apartheid, and affirming support for the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action. ¹⁵³ In the context of soil, this reparatory agenda demands recognising that Africa's soils themselves have been sites of colonial extraction and racial capitalism, leaving enduring ecological and social scars. ¹⁵⁴ Decolonising soil governance, therefore, means restoring decision-making power, tenure security, and material benefits to African communities whose livelihoods are rooted in the land, and ensuring that future frameworks for soil protection are shaped with, rather than merely applied to, those custodians. ¹⁵⁵

Additional momentum comes from the G20 South Africa Summit. In its 2025 Leaders’ Declaration, the G20 reaffirmed food as a fundamental right and political priority, and committed members to resilient and sustainable food systems, explicitly linking modernised agriculture and food-systems resilience to “land, soil biodiversity, energy and water management”, support for sustainable technologies and innovation, and investment in smallholder and family farmers. ¹⁵⁶ It condemns the intentional starvation of civilians as a method of warfare and calls for open, non-discriminatory trade consistent with World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules to reduce food price volatility. Under the South African Presidency, the G20 Food Security Task Force and the Ubuntu Approaches on Food Security and Nutrition ¹⁵⁷ placed particular emphasis on the vulnerabilities of low-income households and Africa's food security challenges, aligning with African frameworks such as the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and calling for strengthened local production, storage, and distribution capacities. This signals a growing convergence between global economic governance and soil-based food security, positioning soil management at the heart of efforts to tackle hunger, poverty, and climate risk.

These shifts do not yet constitute a regime, but they outline its contours. Compared to air and oceans, soils have suffered from the invisibility of their transboundary effects and the political sensitivity of agriculture and land use. ¹⁵⁸ The result has been a piecemeal approach: hundreds of instruments indirectly impact soils, but few impose soil-specific obligations, and monitoring and review are weak. ¹⁵⁹ The SDGs’ LDN target supplies a planning scaffold, but not a binding framework; the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's (UNFCCC) processes recognise land and sinks but leave below-ground biodiversity, contamination, and cultural values underspecified; and soft-law platforms (e.g., the Global Soil Partnership) have struggled to catalyse uniform standards. ¹⁶⁰

Two complementary pathways are therefore proposed. The first is a stand-alone international soil instrument – a framework convention on soil security with protocols (or annexes) on (i) standards and indicators, (ii) monitoring and disclosure (national soil information systems; comparable datasets; early-warning for erosion, salinisation, and contamination), (iii) restoration and remediation (targets; best-available-techniques; polluter-pays liability), (iv) finance and technology (targeted support for developing countries, smallholders, and indigenous custodians), and (v) participation, access to information, and justice (standing for communities, accredited NGOs, and guardians; remedies oriented to ecological repair and non-economic loss). The second is regime integration by design: an amendment protocol or technical annexe under one of the three Rio conventions that elevates soil functions from a derivative concern to a primary object, paired with a compliance committee and facilitative review. ¹⁶¹ The UNCCD COP17 (to be held in August 2026 in Mongolia) provides the most immediate and relevant forum for building on the groundwork done by Resolution 007. Either route would confer legal visibility on soils, synchronise standards across regimes, and catalyse finance for restoration at scale.

Crucially, judicial capacity must co-evolve with norm-setting. A specialised environmental chamber under the ICJ (or a parallel tribunal with ICJ-linked advisory competence) would ensure that soil-related duties are justiciable and that violations attract consequences. The chamber's procedures should be crafted for environmental litigation, including science-integrated fact-finding, precautionary measures, methodological guidance on attributing diffuse soil harms, and calibrated deference that does not dilute minimum core obligations. The chamber could also serve as a hub for structured dialogue with regional courts and compliance bodies, facilitating judicial comity rather than fragmentation and consolidating the law across various fora. Normatively, the regime should make explicit what the law already implies. This contribution has argued for the recognition of an emerging human right to healthy soil as integral to human and food security. The right gives juridical expression to the ICJ's environment-as-precondition logic and to regional environmental-rights jurisprudence: it secures soils’ minimum functional integrity so that core ecosystem functions are not irreversibly impaired. Corresponding state duties map onto the familiar tripartite structure: to respect (do not authorise harmful land-use or contamination that foreseeably degrades soil functions), to protect (regulate private actors; enforce due diligence and the polluter-pays principle), and to fulfil (restore degraded soils; fund monitoring, extension, and remediation). Procedurally, it guarantees access to information, participation, and justice, including community standing or guardianship for soil ecosystems and remedies centred on restoration and non-economic loss.

The IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law (WCEL) and its Specialist Group on Soil and Sustainable Agriculture Law have been rightfully tasked with promoting soil security by developing new legal concepts and parameters for an international convention or global legal instrument on soil security that aligns with the other Rio conventions. The final objection, that soils are “too domestic” for international law, cannot survive contemporary evidence or doctrine. Soils are sinks and sources in global cycles; they transmit harms through trade, dust, aquifers, and atmosphere; and their degradation triggers cross-border shocks in food, health, migration, and climate.

Conclusion

The ICJ-AO rejects regime siloing and demands systemic integration. The PAP Model Law and EU Soil Monitoring Directive demonstrate the feasibility of codifying standards and surveillance. AMCEN-20 issued a continental call to strengthen soil governance, and the IUCN Motion 007 now mandates the design of a global legal instrument. The task before international law, policy, and governance is no longer to justify soil's inclusion but to ultimately build the forum and establish the framework that the planet now requires.

If climate change has taught us anything in public international law, it is that the line between anthropocentrism and ecocentrism is juridically permeable and so is the transnational line between national and international law: protecting the conditions of life ultimately serves to protect human dignity. So, it is with soil. A Global Soil Instrument, paired with a judicial mechanism capable of hearing soil claims, would translate ethical insight, scientific evidence, and factual necessity into an enforceable duty. It would also honour a more profound wisdom long held in the Global South: namely, that life and soil are inseparable, and that justice, to endure, must be done from the ground up.