Sustainability: A Dirty Matter
Developing an educational board game to demonstrate the importance of soil health in meeting the challenges of a sustainable world
Soils play a vital role in food security and safety, biomass production, resource efficiency, climate change mitigation and adaptation, flood control, water quality and biodiversity conservation. The accomplishment of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals- Zero Hunger, Clean Water, Climate Action and Life on Land (SDGs 2, 6, 13 and 15) depend directly on soil health. Yet, soil literacy remains low while soil quality is fast deteriorating.
In this project, an interdisciplinary team comes together to develop a board game to raise awareness and co
mmunicate the challenges associated with these SDGs and demonstrate soil-based solutions to them. The game helps players to not only understand soil multifunctionality, but also utilize complex soil functions to mitigate the associated challenges. This educational game highlights the strong links, feedbacks and trade-offs that exist between these SDGs and suggests collaborative and interdisciplinary solutions that preserve soil health as well as our socio-economic needs.
The board game is made freely available and accessible, for use in social engagement events, as a teaching aid and to foster public curiosity towards complex soil ecosystems and their importance for human wellbeing and wealth.
This project is joint collaboration between five young researchers from four European Universities. The soil board game team consists of:
- Tanvi Taparia- University of Copenhagen
- Christina van Midden- Cranefield University
- Nicolas Beriot- Wageningen University
- Emma Burak- Cranefield University
- Michael Loebmann- Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research
- University of Copenhagen
- Wageningen University
- Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research and
- Cranefield University
More information
To download and play the board game-
https://soilgame.wixsite.com/free2print
To read more about sustainable soil management
https://www.soilmissionsupport.eu
Contact us
For more information, please reach out to Dr. Tanvi Taparia (tanvi.taparia@bio.ku.dk).
The British Society of Soil Science Interdisciplinary Grants
for Early Career Researchers and Professionals
Section of Microbiology
Funden by:
Sustainability: A Dirty Matter has received funding from LINK
Project: Sustainability: A Dirty Matter
Period: 2021-present
Contact
Postdoc Tanvi Taparia
Universitetsparken 15,
Building 1, 1. floor
DK-2100 Copenhagen
E-mail: tanvi.taparia@bio.ku.dk