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Land degradation and desertification reduce the provision of ecosystem services by lands and soils. This constrains development, reduces water, food, and energy security, and triggers resource conflicts. Although biophysical processes and economic impacts are increasingly understood, efforts to combat degradation have been failing thus far to prevent further losses of land productivity, a cost…

Through its two components: Land for Life Award and Awareness raising and Knowledge Support, the Land for Life programme will show-case and highlight how the existing local, national and regional efforts in rehabilitating and managing the land sustainably, bring multiple benefits to communities through increased land productivity, employment opportunities, greater resilience in the face of…

Human activities are the principal drivers of the processes of land degradation, desertification and climate change. Though highly complex and difficult to predict, interactions between climate change and land degradation are likely to affect a range of different ecosystem functions and the services they deliver, with consequent impacts on food production, livelihoods and human well-being. …

In light of these types of considerations, using objective metrics like economic values provides a way for different stakeholders to compare the trade-offs of alternative future options or scenarios and thus deliberate on land issues from an equally informed position. Considering land issues from the perspective of the economic values that nature provides involves measuring and valuing all of the…

Targets set up at the international level for forest and landscape restoration (FLR) are ambitious: restoring 150 million hectares of degraded lands by 2020 under the Bonn Challenge, an additional 200 million hectares by 2030 under the New York Declaration on Forests, and achieving land degradation neutrality by 2030 as Target 15.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To reach these…

An active process that brings people together to identify, negotiate and implement practices that restore an agreed optimal balance of the ecological, social and economic benefits of forests and trees within a broader pattern of land uses.