In September 2015, the global community agreed on “The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”, including 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and 169 targets. Goal 15 urges countries to “protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss”.
Achieving change to address soil erosion has been a global yet elusive goal for decades. Efforts to implement effective solutions have often fallen short due to a lack of sustained, context-appropriate and multi-disciplinary engagement with the problem.
Climate change increasingly affects agricultural systems, making it necessary for farmers to adapt to changing climatic conditions.
A framework was developed to elucidate (1) the drivers of land degradation, (2) pressures, (3) local impacts and vulnerabilities and (4) adaptation strategies.
The complexity of spatial use has an impact on poverty and the development of slum settlements towards a decrease in environmental quality.
The loss of ecosystem services through land degradation continues to be a significant concern for policymakers and land users around the world. Facilitating collective action among various actors is regarded as imperative in halting land degradation.
Achieving land degradation neutrality (LDN) was adopted by countries in 2015 as one of the targets of the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As LDN is a relatively new concept there is an increasing need for evidence on the potential socio-economic and environmental benefits of LDN as well as how an enabling environment for implementing LDN measures can be developed.
The Re-Greening of the West African Sahel has attracted great interdisciplinary interest since it was originally detected in the mid-2000s. Studies have investigated vegetation patterns at regional scales using a time series of coarse resolution remote sensing analyses. Fewer have attempted to explain the processes behind these patterns at local scales.
Desertification is defined as land degradation occurring in the global drylands. It is one of the global problems targeted under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 15). The aim of this article is to review the history of desertification and to evaluate the scientific evidence for desertification spread and severity.
Pastoralism faces diverse challenges, that include, among others, land tenure insecurity, that has necessitated the need to formalize land rights. Some governments have started regularizing rights for privately owned land, but this is complex to implement in pastoral areas where resources are used and managed collectively.
