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• The governance of soil to achieve global solutions is a long-standing challenge. • Binding international soil policy is lacking. • A complex web of institutions exhibit emergent properties that may lead to change. • Soil management problems are chronic problems requiring natural/social science partnerships. The global soilscape is a resource commons that is essential to society. Social science has been engaged in theoretical and empirical research as to how commons can be effectively managed, especially at a global scale, for more than 50 years. This has provided some rules and guideposts for their sustainable management, rules relevant to the soil commons. Presently, there is an international soil policy vacuum. The absence of binding policy helps explain the inability to implement scientific tools, such as soil C climate mitigation strategies, at significant levels over the past two decades. At national and subnational scales, especially in the USA which is considered here, there are a multitude of public and private soil health policies and programs, with vastly different scales and funding resources. These are largely not well coordinated, but according to polycentric management theory, may be viewed as a complex system, with evolving emergent properties and resulting impacts. Soil science must connect with business leaders, social scientists, policy implementers, politicians and others to develop a more coherent and effective policy web, one which might eventually lead to binding international agreements. This is likely to be a multi-generational effort, but will provide intellectually stimulating challenges for present and future generations of scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]