Healthy land is key to achieving many of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, from reducing climate change, biodiversity loss and poverty, to increasing equality, decent work and food security for nearly eight billion people. That’s why, with the productivity of a quarter of our land already diminished, over 120 countries have committed to set voluntary national Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) targets, and joined the LDN Target Setting Programme to avoid, reduce and reverse such degradation. This policy brief shares the findings and recommendations from the technical data and policy reviews of the Programme to further strengthen those efforts.

In 2015, governments identified their priorities and objectives to achieve LDN, and then backed them with strong political statements. Reflecting that demand for urgent action, within a year, the Global Mechanism and the secretariat of the UNCCD and its international partners had established the LDN Target Setting Programme, which takes countries through a structured process to help leverage, assess, measure and achieve their commitments to LDN. Already, countries’ efforts to identify shared visions, achievable solutions, priority hot-spots and monitoring baselines have shaped a new data-driven approach to tackling land degradation.