Phases

Updated 15 July 2021.

Rebuilding healthy soil is a collaborative process, an unfolding story, and a shared journey.

Because the state of the world’s soils was not well-known when we began in 2018, it took some time for people to catch on to the project.

But catch on it did. In 2019, the IPCC’s Climate Change and Land Use Report was published, and as it was slowly digested, the breadth of ways that soil and land mattered in holding together our earth systems became clear.

In 2019, we learnt that Singapore is part of the Global Soil Partnership, and that its biennale reports to the UNFCCC include data on its soil conditions.

Page 75 of Singapore’s fourth NC and third BUR submitted on 27 December 2018. As a party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Singapore is required to periodically submit a National Communication (NC) and a Biennial Update Report (BUR).

What we’ve also learnt is to stay guided by our guts–which tell us the earth needs a rewilding and our human communities need a reflourishing of lively relations with our lands–and keep chipping away at things. Guiding stars appear when we need them, if we tune in to something hard enough–and we’ve found this to be true as we learn to tell the story of soil, with and for it.

There are many faces, voices and hours of work behind this project–and it’s really only started.

In May 2019, we ran a Community Literature Review on urban soil in Asia. As part of that we also asked our participants what they thought soil regeneration was. Listen to what we chatted about (or try here if the audio player doesn’t work)!
Phase 1: Research Pilot (2019)
  • Public Panel Keynote with Marialine Verdickt – 29 May 2019
  • Soil tests attempt #1 at a banana circle in a community garden plot – Sept 2019
  • A gathering to identify indicators for our soil tests – August 2019
Describing the community-led research implementation and outreach of the Soil Regeneration Project
Our approach to Community-led research: Implementation and outreach of the Soil Regeneration Project

Working with our mentors, various work groups and a project team, and students from Yale-NUS College, we moved from a Community Literature Review to Site Visits, and to co-developing our research methods. Blue bars indicates what we’ve completed; and yellow indicates things now in progress (as of Feb 2020).

Phase 2: Capacity-building Programme (2020)

From 2020, we are laying out the first draft of our Community Soil Manual, and compiling a curriculum (we’re very excited about this) around soil regeneration, for use with schools and the public in Singapore.

Phase 3: Platform (2021 – beyond)

To demonstrate use cases for aligned products and services for small-scale agroecological farming, from 2021, we will begin working publicly with organisations and businesses that are already working to make a mindful food system possible for urban populations.