Land, air and water are the cornerstones of life on Earth. To sustain the vitality of our global ecosystem, we must understand the health of our natural assets and how to halt and repair damage done to them. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)…

This editorial represents a clarion call for the aeolian research community to provide increased scientific input to theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and an in-vitation to apply for ISAR funding to organize a…

Worsening land degradation caused by human activities is undermining the well-being of two fifths of humanity, driving species extinctions and intensifying climate change. It is also a major contributor to mass human migration and increased conflict, according to the world’s first comprehensive…

Land Degradation & Development Volume 29, Issue 4 Pages i - i, 861 - 1302, April 2018 RESEARCH ARTICLES

The Expert Review of the First Order Draft of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Climate Change and Land (SRCCL) will take place from 11 June to 5 August 2018. Expert Reviewers can register at https://www.ipcc.ch/apps/comments/srccl/fod/ until 29 July 2018.

The website enables the user to explore linkages between countries’ NDCs and specific SDG targets. For each SDG, the user is able to click on a specific country on the interactive map to see how many SDG targets are incorporated in its NDC. At the same time, one can click on a specific SDG and…

Viewing humans as drivers of change operating outside the natural environment is unhelpful for defining interventions that effectively manage change and complexity. Indeed, there is now broad agreement that environmental governance needs to consider integrated social-ecological systems (SES) in…

This study is the first to comprehensively evaluate the spatial and temporal change of vacant land within the built‐up area of a large city in China. We used the core city of Shanghai as a case‐study to systematically investigate the spatial–temporal distribution of vacant land at the fine scale.…

Agroforestry is an integrated land use management that combines a woody component with a lower story agricultural production recognized as one of the most important tools to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

The trick to boosting crops in drought-prone, food-insecure areas of West Africa could be a ubiquitous native shrub that persists in the toughest of growing conditions. Growing these shrubs side-by-side with the food crop millet increased millet production by more than 900 percent, according to a…

In recent decades there have been numerous global and regional targets and initiatives to halt and reverse land degradation. The land degradation neutrality (LDN) target, embedded in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), provides a framework for countries to avoid or reduce…

Desertification: the Invisible Frontier of Land Degradation, Poverty and Migration, an Exposure story to highlight the causes and consequences of land degradation

Centre for Land Tenure Studies (CLTS) Working Paper on land tenure reforms and land markets in Africa

This collection of papers began with our recognition of the vital need to improve our collective record on gender and agroforestry.

In this study authors used the Global Inventory Monitoring and Mapping Studies (GIMMS) dataset to analyze trends in the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) in the world’s semiarid regions, based on 30 years of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-Advanced Very High Resolution…

The assessment reveals that shifts in ecological state do not cause permanent soil properties changes, but that at a landscape scale they can limit production, affecting local livelihoods. The framework proposed provided local farmers with relevant information and facilitated communication with…

Our efforts for sustainable development, for peace and stability in drylands and beyond must focus more and more on land.

Food Tank highlights 16 agroforestry projects that are benefiting farmers, communities, and the environment.

This study revealed that conversion of croplands to grasslands or integration of appropriate agroforestry trees in cropping fields in the region has large technical potential of SOC and TN sequestrations.

Regreening Africa could help stem the tide of migration.

In eastern Niger, 241 hectares of degraded land was converted into productive farms for 10,770 women through the Bio-reclamation of Degraded Lands (BDL) system. This has resulted in a 50% increase in agri-income over non-BDL participants. These impacts are from a mid-term evaluation study conducted…

Currently land degradation affects 25% of land, causing severe impacts to global food security, climate and human and environmental wellbeing. The urgent need to reverse this trends calls scientific and development communities to take action and promote a shift to more sustainable land management…

Wageningen Soil Conference 2017: Soil Science in a Changing World; August 27 - 31, 2017 Humankind is currently facing unprecedented challenges regarding food security, water resources, climate change and biodiversity. The participants of the 2015 edition of the Wageningen Soil Conference agreed that…

This year’s UN World Day to Combat Desertification will be celebrated on 17 June and the UN has launched a programme to combat land degradation to help create jobs and boost food security. Africa has some of the most degraded lands in the world, and is only second to Asia in land degradation…

IPBES is pleased to announce the start of the external review for the second order drafts of the chapters and the first order drafts of the summaries for policymakers of the IPBES regional assessments of biodiversity and ecosystem services for Africa, Asia-Pacific and Europe and Central Asia, as…