Soil

The decision of where to build Kaliningrad’s 2018 World Cup stadium was the subject of heated debate; indeed, some had argued against the original building site but were overruled in 2014. Rosprirodnadzor (the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resource Usage) observed that the soil on the island where the stadium was to be constructed contained dangerous substances, such as benzo(a)pyrene and radon, but this observation went unnoticed.

Healthy soils are crucial to human nutrition and the fight against hunger. But worldwide 24 billion tons of fertile soil is lost annually. Barbara Unmüßig calls attention to the growing threat to one of Earth’s most important resources.