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Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) is the new paradigm for managing land degradation, introduced to halt the ongoing loss of healthy land as a result of unsustainable management and land conversion. The goal of LDN is to maintain the land resource base so that it can continue to supply ecosystem services such as provision of food and regulation of water and climate, while enhancing the…

The pressures on global land resources are greater than at any other time in human history. A rapidly increasing population, coupled with rising levels of consumption, is placing ever-larger demands on our land-based natural capital. This results in growing competition among land uses and its provisioning of goods and services.  While we are at a critical…

Agriculture and livestock cover over one-third of the world’s land surface, dwarfing all other land uses. Intensification, driven by a lucrative but largely inefficient food system, has boosted production. However, it has also disturbed cultural landscapes, sustained over thousands of years, and accelerated land and soil degradation, water shortages, and pollution. In spite of production…

We depend on living soil and the biodiversity that underpins functioning ecosystems and supports productive land-based natural capital. Threats are increasing which require a committed and sustained response. A mixture of protection, sustainable management and, where necessary, restoration is needed at a landscape scale to ensure the future of a diverse, living planet.

An outlook is a vantage point, a platform, a perspective; it broadens our vistas and allows us to examine our prospects, both present and future. It is within this broader frame of thinking that the Global Land Outlook (GLO) aims to present a unique perspective on one of the Earth’s most precious assets: land.

Changes in land productivity are the result of environmental conditions and/or land use and management that impacts the quantity and quality of terrestrial ecosystem services. A persistent decline in land productivity points to the long-term alteration in the health and productive capacity of the land, the basis for economic growth and sustainable livelihoods.