Land Degradation Neutrality has been interpreted by scientists as a “state whereby the amount and quality of land resources, necessary to support ecosystem functions and services and enhance food security, remains stable or increases within specific temporal and spatial scales, and ecosystems” (UNCCD, 2015). Adoption of Land Degradation Neutrality in the Rio+20 Outcome Document “The future we want” and the establishment of Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) as Target 15.3 in the Sustainable Development Goals highlights the environmental importance and the conservation dimension of the issue.

Scientists and practitioners increasingly recognise that reversing land degradation is essential if we are to achieve the goals of the UNCCD, CBD or the UNFCCC as well as to continue meeting related sustainable development targets. The translation of global targets into national ones, such as LDN, will help to position the interconnected challenges of Desertification, Land Degradation and Drought at the centre of the conservation sector, and will provide impetus towards more integrated responses to climate change and the other major environmental crises of our time.

In view of the lukewarm attention land degradation related issues have received in the past from the nature conservation community, this Technical Brief is written primarily for a conservation audience, in an effort to build the case for their engagement in LDN and to highlight potential and shared concerns over the proposed LDN target setting. The target audience includes scientists, policy makers and NGOs with a prior knowledge of environmental issues, but who may or may not be working on land degradation issues. Further work will be required to engage communities in LDN dialogue in order to raise their awareness and secure their buy-in to the concept. This is urgent as, although IUCN has engaged with the UNCCD process increasingly during the past decade, the UNCCD has generally received insufficient interest from the conservation sector. The Technical Brief is the output of collaboration between the IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management, World Commission on Environmental Law, the World Commission on Protected Areas, Commission on Education and Communication, and the IUCN Global Drylands Initiative.