All publications and documents

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…

Changes in land productivity are the result of environmental conditions and/or land use and management that impacts the quantity and quality of terrestrial ecosystem services. A persistent decline in land productivity points to the long-term alteration in the health and productive capacity of the land, the basis for economic growth and sustainable livelihoods.

Our perceptions of land are not only a response to the outside world, but also a cause and an effect of cultural filtering, by which certain phenomena feature prominently, while others recede into the background. In other words, the less visible the elements of land are to a particular stakeholder, the less meaning they have for that person and perhaps result in a lack of awareness as to their…

By approximately 6,000 years ago, agricultural expansion had spread across most continents, leading to the clearing of native vegetation and to the culling, or domestication, of herbivores. Native flora and fauna were replaced with intensive crop and livestock management practices as human populations grew and became denser. Starting around 1750, the transformation of land started to…

The growing demand for food, fodder, fuel, and raw materials is increasing pressures on land and the competition for natural resources. At the same time, degradation is reducing the amount of productive land available. The drivers of land degradation are mainly external factors that directly or indirectly impact the health and productivity of land and its associated resources, such as soil,…

It is clear that unsustainable human activities put land at risk and at the same time threaten the ecosystem services on which all humanity depends. There is enormous pressure on global land resources due to rising food demand, a global shift in dietary habits, biofuel production, urbanization, and other competing demands. Landfills, mining, and other extraction activities also contribute to…