Transforming soils: transdisciplinary perspectives and pathways to sustainability

• Social and political factors influence the soil biophysical properties of soils Histories, spatial patterns and socio-economic processes are analytically central.
• Transdisciplinary methods, including participatory approaches, are essential.
• Research must open up choices and broaden out analyses to multiple framings.
• Diverse pathways to transforming soils for sustainability exist.

Soils must be understood from a transdisciplinary perspective, integrating biophysical, social, economic and political understandings. This requires new combinations of methods. This paper introduces the STEPS ‘pathways approach’, which emphasises the importance of ‘framing’ of different options. Through a case study from Ethiopia, the possibilities of a transdisciplinary analysis of soils are explored. This highlights the importance of investigating the spatial patterning of nutrients in farm landscapes, and the social processes that influence why soils have different levels of fertility, as well as how local dynamics are influenced by wider policy framings. A set of participatory methods, including farm mapping, landscape level transect walks and biographical analysis of people and places, is discussed. These help broaden out analysis and open up debate, exposing alternative pathways to sustainability.