Soil Resources of Ukraine: State, Problems and Strategy of Sustainable Management

The purpose of this study is to propose the concept of a strategy for sustainable management of soil resources in Ukraine based on the analysis of the dynamics and current state of soils and their fertility. In this study, we used such main methods: analysis, synthesis, monographic, expert assessments, calculation-and-analytical, abstract-and-logic, cartographic. Despite the intensification of soil degradation (losses of humus and nutrients, especially phosphorus and potassium, erosional losses of the upper fertile layer, physical degradation of soils; acidification of soils, especially in the Polissya and in the Carpathian region; secondary alkalinization and salinization of irrigated soils), there is a reduction in funding for soil protection measures. The area of degraded and infertile soils in Ukraine is over 8 mln ha, and direct annual losses of income only from crop failure due to the main types of soil degradation reach about 33.6 bln UAH in the country as a whole. The novelty of the study is that the provisions on the strategy of sustainable management of soil resources of Ukraine were further developed, in particular, in terms of a holistic macroeconomic approach to the scale of soil degradation and its environmental-and-economic consequences, and a holistic solution through a set of strategic measures of soil fertility reproduction. One of the first attempts to substantiate the strategy of sustainable management of soil resources of Ukraine from the standpoint of an interdisciplinary approach, which provides for: improvement of legislative and regulatory support; improving information and institutional support; effective international cooperation; technological and financial support of sustainable soil management, as well as forecast economic, environmental and social effects of solving the problem of soil degradation. The practical value of the obtained results is that their application should help increase the efficiency and performance of sustainable management of soil resources and achieve land degradation neutrality in Ukraine.