Numbers can tell a compelling story. In this brochure, the numbers highlight how much we rely on productive land. Amongst other valuable services, land feeds our families, provides fresh water and powers our future ambitions. Much of the data collected here, however, demonstrate how close we are to pushing our relationship with the land to breaking point. The magnitude of the challenges and potential consequences of failing to implement bold action on land and soil, in terms of future social stability and economic development, should not be underestimated.

Humankind currently faces interconnected, worldwide challenges of feeding our rapidly growing population while simultaneously preserving our natural resource base, adapting to climate change, and creating or maintaining favourable living conditions for present and future generations. The world’s population is growing exponentially. It is expected to rise from seven to more than nine billion people in the next few decades.

US cities are at the forefront of the sustainable development challenge. They contain 80% of the country’s population, and therefore have the capacity to make or break SDG achievement (US Census Bureau 2016). But, while crucial to SDG attainment, they Executive Summary cannot accomplish this alone. While 80 percent of US residents live in urban areas, only 3 percent of land is urban; rural and urban areas are deeply interconnected (US Census Bureau 2016).

Two billion hectares of productive land are degraded worldwide. This is an area larger than South America or twice the size of China, and 500 million hectares of this is abandoned agricultural land. We continue to degrade another 12 million hectares of productive land every year. We need to break this destructive cycle because the benefits of preventing land degradation and reversing it are far greater than the gains from degrading new land year after year.

The conference reviewed the current state-of-knowledge of dryland ecosystems; it identified important knowledge gaps for defining future paths of research into drylands; and it commemorated fifty years of dryland research in the UN system in the context of the International Year of Deserts and Desertification. The conference - in a cross-cutting manner - also addressed issues related to research and science needed for dryland conservation, policy options for sustainable dryland development, and necessary interventions and

Productive land is a critical natural asset for rural communities in developing nations, providing them with a wide range of ecosystem resources, such as water, fertile soils, plant and genetic diversity – on which they depend daily for survival. For many communities, the land is also an integral part of their cultural identity, helping to maintain social cohesion and stability, in addition to building resilience to socio-ecological shocks and risks such as those caused by climate change. But land is a vulnerable resource that must be managed and restored to ensure a sustainable future.

Numbers can tell a compelling story. In this brochure, the numbers highlight how much we rely on productive land. Amongst other valuable services, land feeds our families, provides fresh water and powers our future ambitions. Much of the data collected here, however, demonstrate how close we are to pushing our relationship with the land to breaking point. The magnitude of the challenges and potential consequences of failing to implement bold action on land and soil, in terms of future social stability and economic development, should not be underestimated.

Key findings of the Sustainable Development Report 2019
World nations obtain their worst performance on SDG 13 (Climate Action), SDG 14 (Life Below Water), and SDG 15 (Life on Land). No country obtains a “green rating” (the report’s indicator for the achievement of an SDG) on SDG 14 (Life Below Water).

Soils are an essential and non-renewable natural resource hosting goods and services vital to ecosystems

Drylands are complex social-ecological systems, characterized by non-linearity of causation, complex feedback loops within and between the many different social, ecological, and economic entities, and potential of regime shifts to alternative stable states as a result of thresholds. As such, dryland management faces a high level of uncertainty and unpredictability.

Millennium Development Goal Number Seven is particularly concerned with the safeguarding and provision of freshwater resources to all human.beings; this is a major challenge – and perhaps even the main challenge – for all the world’s drylands. SUMAMAD project aims at the sustainable management of marginal drylands, where the scarcity of water imposes restrictions for the productivity of each particular ecosystem. It is needed therefore to look into the entire water complex so as to promote a wise and sustainable water use. However,

The 2019 edition of the Land for Life Award puts the spotlight on individuals and organizations that made outstanding contributions to achieve land degradation neutrality on a large scale, with long-term changes and dedicated actions for 25 years or longer. Those remarkable projects involve local people, communities and the society, raising the level of their ambition. Meanwhile, recent assessments remind us that two billion hectares of land are now degraded worldwide. This represents an area larger than the territory of the Russian Federation, the biggest country in the world.