Land and soil governance towards a transformational post-2015 Development Agenda: an overview

•A sustainable and responsible land and soil agenda is needed to achieve the SDGs.•Transformative land and soil governance needs to take power imbalances into account.•Participatory processes and accountability mechanisms are needed to achieve the SDGs.•Transformative research has to engage in governance design and implementation.

The implementation of the SDGs depends on natural resources, including land and soil. The sustainable use of these resources has to be integrated for success. Current governance arrangements and the degree to which they are implemented are, however, far from being appropriate to respond to the land-related and soil-related challenges to sustainable development. Among other things, governance approaches need to better address power imbalances. Appropriate accountability mechanisms within the post-2015 Development Agenda would be one way of addressing this challenge. To contribute to the successful implementation of the post-2015 Development Agenda, governance research would need to change too. Land and soil governance research must be more systematically conducted in a transdisciplinary way and must engage with ongoing transformation processes.