© Senckenberg Museum of Natural History Görlitz · 2020 ISSN 1864-6417 (print) · ISSN 2509-9523 (online) pp. 95–98 POLITICAL STATEMENT Soil and biodiversity – Demands on politics* Jeannette Mathews 1, *, Frank Glante 1 , Michael Berger 2 , Gabriele Broll 3 , Uta Eser 4 , Andreas Faensen-Thiebes 5 , Norbert Feldwisch 6 , Wilhelm König 7 , Nikola Patzel 6, 8 , Rolf Sommer 1 and Willi E.R. Xylander 9 1 German Environment Agency, Woerlitzer Platz 1, 06844 Dessau-Roßlau, Germany 2 WWF Germany, Reinhardtstraße 18, 10117 Berlin, Germany 3 Institute for Geography, University Osnabrück, Seminarstr. 19 a/b, 49074 Osnabrück, Germany 4 Bureau for Environmental Ethics, Aixer Straße 74, 72072 Tübingen, Germany 5 Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz, Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 5, 10553 Berlin, Germany 6 Bureau for Soil Protection and Sustainable Land Use Feldwisch, Karl-Philipp-Straße 1, 51429 Bergisch Gladbach, Germany 7 Otto-Hahn-Str. 30, 40591 Düsseldorf, Germany 8 Commission chair ‘Soil in Education and Society’ of German Soil Science Society, and Bureau for Soil Communication, Seestraße 5, 88662 Überlingen, Germany 9 Senckenberg Museum of Natural History Görlitz, P.O. Box 300 154, 02806 Görlitz, Germany * Corresponding author, e-mail: jeannette.mathews@uba.de Received 30 May 2020 | Accepted 23 June 2020 Published online at www.soil-organisms.de 1 August 2020 | Printed version 15 August 2020 DOI 10.25674/so92iss2pp95 92 (2) · August 2020 1. Introduction During the conference ‘Rediscovering the soil with Alexander von Humboldt. Soil and Biodiversity - Everything is connected with everything’ in Berlin on December 5, 2019, a political statement was prepared as a major result of the discussion. Many important German organisations for nature conservation and soil protection (Tab. 1) signed this political statement in the spring of 2020. A translated version of ‘Boden und Biodiversität – Forderungen an die Politik’ is presented here, as it addresses the German and the EU common agricultural and conservational policy. 2. Key player soil organisms Healthy soils flter water, making it suitable for drinking, protect us from fooding, provide nutrients, and allow food to grow. It can do all of this and more only because benevolent creatures under our feet work together like the wheels in clockwork. They include bacteria, fungi, ants and other insects, earthworms, small mammals, and many more (Xylander et al. 2015). One teaspoon of soil contains more organisms than there are people on earth (Orgiazzi et al. 2016). The countless microorganisms and soil animals crush and recycle leaves and other dead plant material. An important product of this process is humus, the most precious part of fertile soil. Humus contains nutrients, stores water, and stabilises the soil structure. The soil also stores carbon in the humus, thereby reducing the amount of the climate-relevant greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Thus, the protection of soil biodiversity also aids in climate protection. * Results of the conference ‘Rediscovering the soil with Alexander von Humboldt. Soil and Biodiversity - Everything is connected with everything’ on 5 December 2019 in Berlin