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Soil health is vital for many ecosystem services. The Horizon Europe (HE) Mission “A Soil Deal for Europe” aims to accelerate the transition to sustainable soil and land management and healthy soils through an am-bitious transdisciplinary research and innovation (R&I) programme, largely based on actor engagement, Liv-ing Labs and Lighthouses. The H2020 Soil Mission Support (SMS) project supported the implementation of the HE Mission, and aimed to improve the coordination of R&I on sustainable soil and land management. Through a co-creation process together with actors, SMS collated available knowledge, actors R&I needs and identified R&I gaps that need to be addressed for successful transition towards sustainable soil and land management. The first step was to identify existing R&I knowledge through a keyword-based analysis of scientific literature published and peer reviewed, related to sustainable soil and land management. The literature analysis ad-dressed the full range of societal challenges, soil health objectives, land use types and knowledge domains necessary to capture the socio-ecological complexity of soil health. Covering some 15,700 scientific articles, this literature analysis represents the current peer reviewed knowledge stock on sustainable soil and land management. A textual analysis using the digital platform CorTexT was undertaken to explore the identified literature and submitted to project consortium internal experts, who analysed and processed the collected information of their respective area of expertise (Annex III). The literature analysis revealed that the societal challenges “reduce soil degradation” and “improve disaster control” have been studied extensively. Con-versely, the societal challenges “mitigate land take” and “increase biodiversity” and the knowledge domains “science-based policy support” and “awareness, training & education” are less discussed. Factsheets present-ing the results of the literature analysis per societal challenge were developed and can be found in Annex VIII. Note that as the key-word based literature search was limited to Scopus-indexed scientific journals, other publishing formats such as conference papers, books, book chapters, non-digitalized articles, grey literature, reports, patents, etc., may be underrepresented or not included in the used data base. The exclusive use of Scopus-indexed scientific articles provided quality insurance of the material through the publication peer-review system. Nonetheless, important documents and knowledge have been incorporated by the consor-tium experts when analysing the collected literature. The second step was to consult actors through online workshops and surveys in order to gain a practice-oriented ‘real-life’ picture of current knowledge and R&I needs for swift implementation of sustainable soil and land management. This step was seen as complementary of the published and peer-reviewed literature. Finally, after exploring our stocktaking of R&I from existing knowledge evidenced by literature review and the actor’s knowledge needs identified from actor consultations, we identified R&I gaps. The main knowledge gaps across all Mission Objectives were of socio-economic nature: drivers and causes of land degradation, knowledge management, governance and policies for inciting improved management, and interaction with other sectors are not sufficiently understood. Second, the HE Missions’ focus on improving soil literacy was supported by the literature analysis and by the actor consultation, which both revealed knowledge gaps re-lated to education and capacity building in all land use types and domains affecting soil health: production, consumption, trade, policy and governance. Thirdly, there is a gap in the long-term implementation of a new mode of knowledge co-design, where researchers and practitioners together develop solutions for sustaina-ble soil and land management in a real-world context. The HE Missions’ focus on Living Labs and Lighthouses has the potential to close this gap. Finally, there is a need to define several concepts (e.g. soil health, soil degradation, footprint). Such definitions should be shared and will be a basis to identify relevant indicators and respective thresholds, and to develop guidelines to support monitoring programmes in order to translate knowledge into evidence for decision making. The outcome of the deliverable is a list of validated R&I gaps across all Mission Objectives which will feed into the SMS roadmap and the HE Mission.

Soil health is vital for many ecosystem services and crucial for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and the European Green Deal's goals. The Horizon Europe (HE) Mission “A Soil Deal for Europe” aims to accelerate the transition to sustainable soil and land management, and healthy soils through an ambitious transdisciplinary research and innovation (R&I) programme, largely based on actor engagement, Living Labs and Lighthouses. The H2020 Soil Mission Support (SMS) project supports the implementation of the HE Mission and aims to improve the coordination of R&I on sustainable soil and land management. Through a co-creation process together with actors, SMS collates available knowledge, actors R&I needs and identifies R&I gaps that need to be addressed for successful transition towards sustainable soil and land management. The presented R&I roadmap on soils and land management is a strategic document outlining the actions and the pathway to address R&I needs from different actors and sectors, as well as societal challenges. The roadmap presents the most important R&I knowledge gaps for each Soil Mission Objective, which were iden-tified in collaboration with stakeholders from all relevant sectors and based on the key findings of the project. To ensure that the R&I elements of the roadmap can effectively contribute to the desired transformation of land and soil management, the impact pathways approach was chosen as the analytical framework. The im-pact pathways are key component of the roadmap and describe several research actions that should be taken up to address the knowledge gaps and show what results we can expect from these actions that will lead to a short, medium- and finally long-term impact. The results show that to reach the eight Mission Objectives a common understanding of soil health is needed, as well as research and innovation in both natural sciences as well as social and economic spheres. The actions identified in the roadmap should be closely integrated. Future projects should focus more on finding systemic approaches to highlight synergies and minimise or avoid trade-offs while addressing the individual soil mission objectives.

It is assumed that the Soil Mission and its related objectives and specific targets can only be achieved through healthy soils and for that it is needed to engage stakeholders. This is needed because stakeholders: bring in knowledge; have the power to make or to block decisions (policy) and measures (management); and can ensure the relevance and acceptance of outcomes. Stakeholders are defined as those who are affected in their interest or concern by changes in land and soil management. When stakeholders effectively engage in the achievement of the Soil Mission objectives, they become active and thus actors in soil and land management. The guidance to effectively engage actors in land and soil management involves the taking of 6 key-steps: 1. Realize why it is needed to engage them; 2. Select the actors; 3. Decide upon the appropriate level of engagement; 4. Apply the key-principles of actor engagement; 5. Select and apply the appropriate engagement tools and formats; and finally 6. Reflect on previous steps and make adjustment as needed, lessons are learnt. These steps are further elaborated in this document. Furthermore, there are examples included of actual engagement of actors in natural resources management related cases and tools and formats are suggested that support the engagement of actors. It is assumed that actors will only engage in land and soil management if they recognize benefits in engagement, or, in other words: see ‘what’s in for them’. Therefore, also first drafts for tailored value propositions to different groups of actors are provided in this document. These drafts can serve as a starting point in further engagement of actors from these groups. Through engagement with them the drafts can be further refined.