All publications and documents

The aspirational goal of a land degradation neutral world, to be realized by reducing the rate of land degradation and increasing the rate of restoration of degraded land, was agreed at the Rio+20 Conference in 2012. This paper evaluates the feasibility of introducing a Land Degradation Neutral (LDN) scheme as an activity of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). It…

Motivated by the United Nations target of achieving zero net land degradation by 2030 and the Rio + 20 United Nations' “future we want” resolution, which aims to achieve a green economy, this study was conducted with an objective of identifying strategies for achieving sustainable use of lands at a global and a regional level. Using econometric approaches, we observed that achievement of zero net…

Despite many important success stories around the planet, there is general disappointment at the overall impact of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (hereinafter: UNCCD) during its first 20 years, with soil degradation still a challenge for land managers throughout much of the world's drylands. Calls for a new protocol under the UNCCD that will ensure “Zero Net Land…

Responding to this challenge several gatherings of the scientific community took place during the period following Rio+20 in June 2012 and until SDGs adoption in September 2015. The first one was the 3rd international Conference on Drylands Deserts and Desertification (Sede Boqer, Israel, 12–15 November 2012) session on Operationalizing the Zero Net Land Degradation target, summarized by The ZNLD…

Land degradation is extensive, covering approximately 23% of the globe's terrestrial area, increasing at an annual rate of 5–10 million ha, and affecting about 1.5 billion people globally. Such detrimental processes call for urgent and comprehensive action to halt land degradation. In this paper, we assess the causes and extent of land degradation around the world, followed by an outline of the…

This article summarizes the changes in landscape structure because of human land management over the last several centuries, and using observed and modeled data, documents how these changes have altered biogeophysical and biogeochemical surface fluxes on the local, mesoscale, and regional scales. Remaining research issues are presented including whether these landscape changes alter large-scale…