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.

Land has a value for each and every one of us. Fertile soil provides us with plant life, vegetables, grains, and fibres. Forests supply us with timber and firewood. We benefit from fresh water, food, and many other ecosystem services that land provides us with. Land is also emotionally valuable to people as well, perhaps through associating treasured memories such as playing on it as a child. In any case, all societies and people assign historical and cultural value to their landscapes, their nature, and all natural phenomena associated with land. However, lands are in danger.

Land degradation remains a serious threat to livelihoods in Eastern Africa. The total population of sub-Saharan Africa is currently estimated at 750 million people, but it is projected to exceed the one billion mark by 2020. The demand for food is putting increasing pressure on the natural resource base. The current debate on the land degradation situation in Eastern Africa is short of consensus because of misunderstanding misinterpretation and discrepancies in the available information.

Livestock are kept for a wide range of purposes in Africa, and there is considerable diversity in animal husbandry. Among the most important advantages in keeping animals is their contribution to maintaining and even improving soil fertility. Furthermore, animal husbandry offers economic, social and cultural benefits. However, the authors also look at the constraints that smallholders face in livestock husbandry.

Tropical forage grasses and legumes as key components of sustainable crop-livestock systems in Latin America and the Caribbean have major implications for improving food security, alleviating poverty, restoring degraded lands and mitigating climate change. Climate-smart tropical forage crops can improve the livestock productivity of smallholder farming systems and break the cycle of poverty and resource degradation.

The former Soviet Central Asian republics have undergone de-intensification of their livestock sectors, resulting in an increased reliance on natural pastures. Property rights systems are key to the sustainable management of this resource. However, as the authors demonstrate, it is not easy to implement the respective reform processes.

If the current trend in global meat demand persists, meat production will need to rise from 300 million tons today to 470 million tons by 2050. Climate and our natural resources would lose out, our author warns.

Nowadays it is hard to imagine European livestock production without soya-based feed. But this trend has had a massive impact on rural areas in the global South – the bulk of the soya fed to livestock in Europe is imported from Argentina and Brazil. That is not sustainable, says WWF’s Birgit Wilhelm, who advocates a change in mindset.

China has a longstanding tradition of using biogas for decentralised energy supply. Already, there are nearly 42 million household digesters in the rural areas, a figure set to double by 2020. But the country has even more ambitious plans. In order to achieve its own climate targets and raise the share of renewables in overall energy supply to 15 per cent by 2020, it wants to set up 16,000 middle- and large-scale biogas plants. However, implementation isn’t quite so easy.