The Land of opportunities. A stable Sahel, with a population of over 300 million and a rising urbanization trend, offers immense opportunities for the global market. The Sahel, the vast semi-arid region of Africa separating the Sahara Desert to the north and tropical savannas to the south, is as…

Principles are provided to govern application of the framework and to help prevent unintended outcomes during implementation and monitoring of Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN). To achieve the broader development objectives of the UNCCD and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), LDN interventions…

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), officially known as “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”, are an intergovernmental set of 17 aspiration Goals with 169 targets. The Goals are contained in paragraph 54 United Nations Resolution A/RES/70/1 of 25 September 2015…

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 15 promotes “Life on Land” and SDG target 15.3 states: ‘By 2030, combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation–neutral world.’ This page explains why…

Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) seeks to keep healthy and productive land in balance. It represents a major opportunity to contribute to the “paradigm shift for sustainable development” by scaling up good practices and pilot activities through large-scale transformative projects and programmes…

January 2021 marked a grim milestone in the COVID-19 pandemic, with over 2 million people dead. Since the new strain of coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) emerged on the global stage in early 2020, an historical and unprecedented effort has been deployed to quell this global health crisis. As we settle into a…

Soil forms the basis of all terrestrial ecosystems, yet soil status and its biodiversity are often virtually ignored in environmental assessments. As an essential component of land resources, soil issues are given particular attention in this chapter. The term biodiversity refers to the total…

Desertification is threatening the livelihoods of 1 billion people in over 100 countries, and each year 12 million hectares of arable land are lost to drought. The extent and severity of land degradation worldwide, combined with the negative effects of climate change, population growth and an ever…

Brazil is synonymous with the Amazon for most people. But Brazil’s vast rainforest and wide rivers have not just captured the imagination of ordinary people. It has also captured donor finances due to the invaluable ecosystem services they provide, ranging from influencing global rainfall patterns…

Today the world faces growing problems relating to land-water interactions and water security, which have reached crisis levels in many countries and regions. Key issues include over-use and waste; fluctuations in abundance, with an increasing frequency of both droughts and floods; poor water…

Decision trees to optimize the use of limited resources to manage soil organic carbon using sustainable land management to pursue LDN

LAND is our wealth and our future. A better future is possible if we care, protect, recover, restore and invest in LAND. The ground beneath our feet is more precious than we know. Land is the foundation for all life on Earth. How land is used and managed influences nature, food, water, energy…

Widespread and unprecedented land degradation, including desertification, affects the well-being of at least 3.2 billion people (IPBES “Summary for policymakers of the thematic assessment report on land degradation and restoration,” 2018), threatens food production and biodiversity, contributes to…

Iceland will reach carbon neutrality before the year 2040. This is the ambitious goal that my government set in September 2018 when it introduced a new climate action plan to get us there. Our action plan marks a crucial turning point in Iceland’s contribution to fighting climate change for two…