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Land degradation – the reduction or loss of the productive potential of land – is a global challenge. Over 20% of the Earth’s vegetated surface is estimated to be degraded, affecting over 1.3 billion people, with an economic impact of up to US$10.6 trillion. Land degradation reduces agricultural productivity and increases the vulnerability of those areas already at risk of impacts…

Drylands occupy more than 40% of the world’s land area and are home to some two billion people. This includes a disproportionate number of the world’s poorest people, who live in degraded and severely degraded landscapes. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification states on its website that 12 million hectares are lost annually to desertification and drought, and that more than 1.5…

Nature and biodiversity are being lost worldwide, and the capacity of ecosystems to provide services to people is deteriorating. Most of the targets for 2020 of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will not be achieved, and if the trends of the last decades persist, biodiversity will continue to decline. A new agreement to end biodiversity loss and promote nature restoration is…

Over the past three decades hundreds of thousands of farmers in Burkina Faso and Niger, on the fringes of the Sahara Desert, have transformed large swathes of the region’s arid landscape into productive agricultural land, improving food security for about three million people. Once-denuded landscapes are now home to abundant trees, crops, and livestock.' Sahelian farmers, driven to…

For rural people, especially low-income rural people, land and livelihood are one and the same. Access to land means the opportunity to earn a decent income and achieve food and nutrition security, and it can also pave the way for access to social benefits such as health care and education. A lack of secure land access, on the other hand, can disempower rural people and expose them to the…

In February, 2020, the WHO–UNICEF–Lancet Commission's report A Future for the World's Children? examined threats facing children—from climate change and related crises of poverty, migration, and malnutrition; commercial marketing of harmful substances; and across all sectors, from unsafe roads and hazardous housing to inadequate education and social protection.1 The COVID-19 pandemic is…