Re-Imagining soils sustainable futures: a critical inquiry at the science-policy interface for soils re-politicisation
- Publication Type:
- Thesis
- Issue Date:
- 2022
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Soils, the primary element on which all forms of terrestrial life depend, are now reaching critical thresholds, with one-third of global soil resources moderately to highly degraded. However, they remain “nearly forgotten” in the political domain and almost imperceptible to increasingly urbanised societies, persisting as a “dead matter” of seemingly little interest. This research aims to make visible the political nature of soils and the necessity to bring them into the policy arena to protect the sustainability of their vital functions and processes. To do so, it seeks to understand how framings are purposefully mobilised by actors at the science-policy interface to de/politicise soil issues affecting agenda setting processes and their overall protection. This dissertation presents a novel heuristic device for critical inquiry into soils framings: the Politics of Framing Framework, which combines approaches from political and social sciences, political ecology, and environmental humanities. This tool offers an organising principle for analysing framings by exploring three dimensions: political ontology, power, and justice. The premise is that by unpacking how these dimensions operate in soils framings, we will be in a better position to understand which visions of human-soils relationships are being actualised in reality and which are silenced, how power is mobilised in those framings and what notions of justice are implied for guiding action. Using the PoFF, this research analyses how ontology, power and justice: 1) operate in the social construction of soil as a public policy problem in two jurisdictions: NSW, Australia, and Uruguay. 2) Their connection with processes of de/politicisation. 3) Their impacts in terms of agenda-setting and policy formulation. The findings show that, first, framings are used at the science-policy interface as strategies of de/politicisation to legitimise policy choices that exclude or include soils into the policy agenda and contribute to shaping public perceptions about their (un)importance. Second, soils’ productivist political ontologies are dominant in the policy arena, but there are nuances. Although the experts tend to share this view with policymakers, there are important differences in their interpretations of its implications. Third, under a neoliberal regime such as that of NSW, depoliticising strategies exclude soils from the policy agenda by framing them as a non-political and an apolitical issue, reaffirming the status quo. Fourth, the Uruguayan case shows that soil politicisation can be achieved when the government assumes an active role in their protection and framings at the science-policy interface regarding the conservation rationale align.
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