The challenge of soil erosion management in Switzerland: a socio- anthropological analysis of public policy construction and implemen- tation

Switzerland’s 2014 “Agricultural Report” asserts that the fertility of Swiss agricultural lands is compromised in the long term, and that one of the major causes is water erosion. Yet, the problem of soil erosion is not recent. It has been studied for more than fifty years and included in agroenvironmental policy-making for more than twenty years. However, despite significant improvements, experts agree that the problem persists. This worrying result suggests that agri-environmental instruments fail to induce the desired changes in society-soil interactions, and that the management of soil resources must still be improved. This socio-anthropological research project aims at enriching the debate on the problem of water erosion of arable lands in particular, and of arable soil fertility in general, with the goal to propose new methodological approaches for decisionmakers. Three preliminary results are presented in this paper. (1) The management of soil erosion suffers from a high degree of complexity: scientific blind spots remain, organizational responsibilities are fragmented, and expertise in the field requires trained personnel, time and money. (2) Public policies around soil erosion are best understood as the result of negotiation and compromise, rather than of optimal expert determination. (3) Implementation instruments such as erosion control schemes generate undesired consequences that reduce their effectiveness. These preliminary results demonstrate that soil erosion is both a social and an environmental problem. Moreover, they illustrate how, faced with the multifaceted nature of soil erosion (ecological, agronomical, economic, political and social), sciPublished in Bulletin BGS 37, 25-33, 2016 which should be used for any reference to this work 1