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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.

Land is an essential building block of civilization yet its contribution to our quality of life is perceived and valued in starkly different and often incompatible ways. Conflicts about land use are intensifying in many countries. The world has reached a point where we must reconcile these differences and rethink the way in which we use and manage the land. The evidence presented in…

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.

The current pressures on land are huge and expected to continue growing: there is rapidly escalating competition between the demand for land functions that provide food, water, and energy, and those services that support and regulate all life cycles on Earth. The numerous approaches, technologies, and practices highlighted in this Outlook serve as a timely reminder of…