Soil is one of the planet’s most essential and threatened resources. Soil degradation—caused by erosion, pollution, uncontrolled urbanization, and intensive farming practices—jeopardizes not only food security but also biodiversity, climate balance, and the lives of millions of people.
In response to this crisis, SoilTribes seeks to establish, activate, and strengthen glocal ecosystems for soil values, functions, and connectivity through “Back to the Earth” narratives, building bridges between science, technology, the arts, and community-driven action. Through knowledge exchange, interdisciplinary collaboration, and community-led initiatives, the project’s mission is to promote a systemic and glocal approach to soil restoration, ensuring its long-term sustainability as a vital resource for future generations.
Creating Tribes to Defend the Soil
At its core, SoilTribes is built as a dynamic network comprising several interconnected groups, each playing a distinct role in promoting soil health.
The Community of Practice is a transnational hub where experts, scientists, artists, educators, policymakers, and citizens converge. Structured around four pillars—Academia, Business, Government, and Society—this community co-designs innovative tools, communication strategies, and policy recommendations to improve soil literacy across and beyond Europe.
At regional and local levels, SoilTribes deploys seven** Soil Lab Activators** who catalyze innovation through diverse activities and campaigns. From workshops and soil hackathons to creative exhibitions and soil-bombing campaigns, they bring soil-related themes directly to communities, schools, and cultural institutions.
Additionally, seven Stewardship Assemblies, led by municipalities, serve as participatory forums to collaboratively identify and address local soil challenges. They facilitate peer learning, twinning visits, training, and the co-creation of local soil action plans, fostering community ownership of soil stewardship.
Call to Action: Submit Your Challenge to the SoilTribes Bootcamp
ddd Do you face a soil-related dilemma that needs attention, creativity, and collective action? Are you working in a territory where land, policy, or ecological justice are at stake? Do you have an idea that could grow into a replicable solution with the right support?
This is your opportunity.
The SoilTribes Bootcamp brings together challenge-holders from across Europe to co-design practical, democratic responses to the soil crisis. We invite members of our Community of Practice (CoP) to submit grounded, real-world challenges that address key priorities like soil democracy, territorial justice, commons stewardship, or regenerative transitions.
If selected, you’ll:
- Participate in Bootcamp 1 (October 2025) in Porto, with all travel and accommodation costs covered
- Collaborate with cross-sector teams to prototype responses
- Be eligible for €5,000 in production support and participation in Bootcamps 2 and 3
⏳Deadline to submit your challenge: July 23rd, 2025
📥 Only CoP members can submit —join here if you’re not yet part of the network.
“Back to the Earth” Narratives: Transforming Our Relationship with Soil
For soil restoration to be sustainable and systemic, it is not enough to implement technical or policy solutions. We must also transform how we perceive and relate to the Earth. SoilTribes views “Back to the Earth” narratives as a key tool to rebuild the cultural, emotional, and collective connection with the soils we inhabit and depend on.
For decades, soils have been made invisible or reduced to mere extractable resources within extractivist economic models. Yet soil is much more: a living ecosystem, a biological memory, a biodiversity archive, and a space of interaction between human and non-human life.
“Back to the Earth” narratives aim to break this fragmented view and promote a renewed story where soil is understood as a shared heritage, a source of life, nourishment, and ecological balance. Rebuilding this connection involves integrating ancestral knowledge, peasant practices, Indigenous worldviews, and the voices of science, art, and local communities.
These narratives are not built through top-down discourse but through participatory experiences, local stories, artistic expressions, environmental education, and co-creation projects. From rituals honoring the land’s fertility to stories about food sovereignty or territorial struggles, these “Back to the Earth” narratives activate memory, imagination, and collective commitment.
For SoilTribes, fostering these narratives is just as important as physically restoring soils. Only when people understand the deep value of soil and feel responsible for its care can real and lasting transformation take root.
By promoting these stories, the project helps reconnect citizens with the Earth, not through nostalgia, but through shared responsibility, collective knowledge, and glocal action. Going back to the Earth does not mean looking backward—it means building more sustainable, just, and resilient futures where soils are protected, regenerated, and cherished as the essential asset they are.
Thinkers Who Inspire: Margulis, Haraway, and Tsing
SoilTribes draws philosophical and scientific inspiration from visionary thinkers who have challenged the boundaries between nature and culture.
Biologist Lynn Margulis transformed our understanding of life by showing that cooperation and symbiosis are evolutionary forces as powerful as competition—a key lesson for thinking of soil as a space of interaction and co-creation among species.
From a different perspective, philosopher and biologist Donna Haraway invites us to “stay with the trouble and weave multispecies alliances,” reminding us that soil health requires us to think beyond the human, in a web where worms, microbes, fungi, and plants are essential actors.
Anthropologist Anna Tsing, in her work The Mushroom at the End of the World, tells how damaged ecosystems can regenerate through networks of care, unexpected cooperation, and foraging at the margins—challenging the extractivist logic dominating the planet. For Tsing, fungi—especially species like Matsutake—teach us that even in the ruins left by capitalism, life persists, adapts, and flourishes through unlikely alliances. Fungi ignore borders and hierarchies; they spread through underground networks, connecting trees and soils in resilient systems.
SoilTribes embraces this lesson to cultivate glocal collaborations from the margins and cracks—helping communities survive and regenerate in a world marked by ecological and economic crises.
Culture, Technology, and Community in Service of Restoration
Glocal soil regeneration requires the integration of ancestral wisdom, technological innovation, and active participation. For this reason, SoilTribes develops open tools for soil diagnostics, collaborative mapping, hybrid training, and community resource banks.
It also fosters cross-disciplinary and cross-sector dialogue, understanding that only a systemic perspective and multi-sectoral alliances can ensure long-term impact. The combination of technology, culture, and community is the key to turning soil care into a daily and global practice.
Soil cannot be restored without social justice. SoilTribes advocates for the right to land—its access, care, and collective management—as a prerequisite for ensuring its long-term sustainability. In many regions, land concentration, land grabbing, and the expulsion of rural communities worsen soil degradation and sever the connection between people and territories.
In contrast, SoilTribes promotes a vision based on shared responsibility, equitable access, and the recognition of local knowledge, prioritizing those who live on, work with, and care for the land. Restoring soils also means restoring decision-making power to communities, respecting Indigenous rights, protecting commons, and fostering inclusive governance models that keep land a living, accessible resource for current and future generations.
Only from this systemic, glocal, and territorial justice-based perspective is it possible to regenerate soils and build a sustainable future for all forms of life.
Resources and Alliances for Lasting Impact
SoilTribes does not propose isolated interventions but long-term transformation processes. To this end, it mobilizes educational resources, digital platforms, cooperation networks, and experimentation spaces to strengthen the resilience of communities and ecosystems.
It has established a Community of Practice (CoP)—a collaborative platform designed to bring together stakeholders from various sectors to advance soil sustainability, share knowledge, and co-develop innovative solutions.
The CoP is organized into thematic working groups addressing specific soil sustainability challenges, with flexible formats allowing members to contribute based on their expertise and interests. Regular workshops, meetings, and a central platform support collaboration and knowledge exchange within these groups.
Additionally, it will develop Stewardship Assemblies (SAs)—spaces for implementing citizen-led, place-based solutions to local soil challenges. Through its glocal approach with regional SAs—combining global vision with local action—SoilTribes will create new educational tools, artistic exhibitions, public campaigns, and participatory events.
The project is committed to cultivating a culture of soil stewardship by engaging diverse audiences, fostering cross-sector collaboration, and co-developing sustainable practices with long-lasting benefits for people and the planet. The process brings together all elements of the quintuple helix—government, academia, industry, civil society, and environmental organizations—to jointly develop and implement action plans tailored to the specific needs of each region.
Interested in joining any SoilTribes activities?
- Community of Practice (CoP): Collaborate, innovate, and share experiences with soil sustainability experts. Ideal for those seeking structured involvement and active problem-solving.
- Stewardship Assemblies (SAs): Engage in local soil sustainability actions and policy development in Scafati (Italy), Fundão (Portugal), Altea (Spain), Nantes (France), Michałowice (Poland), Cluj-Napoca (Romania), and Viborg (Denmark). These activities offer a unique chance to participate in practical regional solutions and are exclusive to residents of these countries and cities.
- Network: Collaborate, exchange ideas, and stay informed about soil-related initiatives in a relaxed and flexible environment—a great way to grow your impact and visibility.
