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The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have a deadline of 2030 so, restricting attention to agriculture, development and implementation of management measures, aimed at reaching the goals, is urgent. Even though the current 159 very broad targets and 234 indicators for the SDGs don't mention soils, soils play a key role when addressing indicators 2.4.1 and 15.3.1 aimed at “sustainable agriculture” and “degraded land”, by introducing operational methods to assess soil health and interdisciplinary ecosystem services in line with the SDGs. Application of the soil security concept, combining biophysical and socioeconomic approaches, is essential for sustainability research where dominant socioeconomic considerations by stakeholders should frame the biophysical analysis. If stakeholders don't embrace SDG-inspired innovative management, nothing will materialize in the real world. Much research is still needed to address inter- and transdisciplinary sustainability issues but a plea is made at this critical point in time to also apply a relatively straightforward and pragmatic research approach, essentially based on available data and methods, to assess ecosystem services, defining indicators and thresholds, in line with five key SDGs. Reference is made to an exploratory Dutch case study in a:”Living Lab”. The National Soil Health Institute in the US has already pioneered such a pragmatic approach by first emphasizing socioeconomic aspects and by incorporating the soil health analysis in regenerative farm management that is recognized by farmers. But the five ecosystem services will still have to be assessed here to maintain the link with the SDGs and the policy arena. The 5C's of soil security apply very well at farm level. The soil science profession will benefit from showing specific examples of “Living Labs” where five thresholds of ecosystem services are met, creating: ”Lighthouses” showing examples of achieved sustainable development in which soil health plays a key role as demonstrated by specific measurements.

Long a rather abstract concept, sustainable development has since 2015 been defined by the United Nations in terms of goals (SDGs), specified by targets and indicators.Soils play an important role in several land-related SDGs by their contribution to ecosystem services that, in turn, contribute to biomass production (SDG2), water quality (SDG6), climate mitigation (SDFG13) and biodiversity preservation (SDG15). These goals have been adopted by the European Union when defining their Green Deal. However, sustainable development will only be achieved when stakeholders adopt appropriate management measures that result in a satisfactory level of all four ecosystem services. Adoption, however, is not only a function of technical considerations but is also highly affected by socioeconomic and even psychological factors. The soil security concept that considers both: “hard”and “soft” criteria, is therefore well suited to act as a roadmap towards a sustainable future, focusing soil contributions to ecosystem services and the SDGs. A storyline is proposed starting with connectivity, defining interaction processes among all partners involved in the sustainability debate, followed by condition, and capability that can be defined by a recently proposed quantitative expression of soil health. Soil Capitol expresses soil contributions to ecosystem services in financial terms and thus contributes to connectivity when examples show that non-soil contributions are much more expensive. Environmental laws and regulations, expressed by codification, ideally link soil performance to societal relevance but the tension between individual desires and societal demands requires modern forms of connectivity in terms of willingness to: “joint-learning”, supported by modern communication theory. Following the complete storyline of the 5C's, as proposed by the soil security concept, can make future soil research much more effective from a societal and political point of view.