These guidelines have been developed based on FAO’s and WOCAT’s extensive experience. The book draws, in particular, on WOCAT’s network and its database of SLM knowledge - as well as on WOC AT’s first overview book entitled ‘Where the land is greener’. These guidelines were implemented in the framework of the TerrAfrica partnership, whose main objective is to mainstream and upscale SLM in SSA, through the leveraging and harmonising of multisectoral investments at the local, country, subregional and regional levels.

The negative consequences of human actions have brought our world and our future to a dangerous crossroads: will we be able to avert the worst impacts of climate change? How can we stop and reverse the loss of fertile soil, biodiversity, and other natural capital that supplies all our food and other basic needs? Where are the jobs for millions of unemployed young people?

Many drylands in the world suffer problems of land degradation and desertification derived from human activities and exacerbated by drought. Too often these degradation processes have been endured by the ecosystems for a long time, and, according to forecasts of climate change, are likely to worsen in the future. Ecological restoration combined with adaptive management can be effective tools in response to this environmental and socioeconomic problem.

Almost one-quarter of the world’s land area has been degraded over the past 50 years because of soil erosion, salinization, peatland and wetland drainage, and forest degradation. The resulting damage, in terms of lost ecosystem goods and services, costs the world an estimated US$6.3 trillion a year. Almost a quarter of the world’s land area has been degraded over the past 50 years.
This is the result of soil erosion, salinization, peatland and wetland drainage, and forest degradation.

You cannot put a price tag on nature — but the economic numbers point to its protection,” said Anthony Waldron, the lead author of the report and researcher focused on conservation finance, global species loss and sustainable agriculture.

Land degradation is a widespread crisis, destabilizing nations and communities on a global scale. To be clear, food will be less plentiful (and thus more expensive) unless responsible land management and res- toration is given priority on the international political agenda. The commitment to halt and reverse land degradation will undoubtedly feature prominently in post-2015 development and climate agendas.

When the UN Convention to Combat Desertification was created at the Rio Earth Summit over 25 years ago, it became the only international convention dedicated to protecting, managing and restoring our land. The environmental benefits of that work are already well documented, particularly when it comes to the inextricablelinks with climate change and biodiversity. But this book goes much further by highlighting the impact on the wellbeing of over three billion people – nearly half the world’s population – who are directly affected by land degradation.

The 2020 Africa SDG Index and Dashboards Report provides an assessment of where African countries stand with respect to the SDGs and their progress toward the goals, with the additional lens of “leave no one behind.” The report also includes a preliminary analysis of the impact of COVID‑19 on the SDGs in Africa.

What’s the goal here? To sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation, and halt biodiversity loss. Two billion hectares of land on Earth are degraded, affecting some 3.2 billion people, driving species to extinction and intensifying climate change. Goal 15: Life on land Human life depends on the earth as much as the ocean for our sustenance and livelihoods. Plant life provides 80 percent of the human diet, and we rely on agriculture as an important economic resources.

States of ecological maturity and temporal trends of drylands in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia north of 28 N are reported for 1998–2008. The input data were Normalized Difference Vegetation Index databases and corresponding climate fields, at a spatial resolution of 1 km and a temporal resolution of one month. States convey opposing dynamics of human exploitation and ecological succession. They were identified synchronically for the full period by comparing each location to all other locations in the study area under equivalent aridity.

IUCN unveiled a Global Standard providing the first-ever set of benchmarks for nature-based solutions to global challenges. The new IUCN Global Standard will help governments, business and civil society ensure the effectiveness of nature-based solutions and maximise their potential to help address climate change, biodiversity loss and other societal challenges on a global scale. The world is looking for durable and effective options to tackle global challenges such as climate change, food and water security, and now, economic recovery from the global pandemic.

When the IFAD-funded project started in 1988, few people could have imagined that 15 years later the degraded plateaus would be covered with trees on land restored to production by individual smallholder farmers. And no one imagined that a village on a barren degraded plateau would one day produce enough vegetables to meet its own needs and produce a surplus for sale, because water levels in the wells had risen so much.