Land Degradation & Tenure

The University of Tennessee’s Dept. of Geography in collaboration with ICARDA, ILRI, USDA-ARS, and Cornell University’s Dept. of Natural Resources collected TLS data in the cold desert shrub-steppe ecosystem of the East Bank Plateau of Amman, Jordan and in mixed Acacia-Commiphora woodlands of Borana Plateau in southern Ethiopia.

Agro-ecosystems in dry areas are sensitive to changes in climate and land use. The productivities of these agro-ecosystems are highly variable in both spatial and temporal scales. Accurate and up-to-date information on these production systems at farmscape to landscape scales are important for understanding the food security

This final report synthesizes the results of the Iraq Salinity Project, a research partnership between five Iraqi ministries and national agencies and an international team of researchers, led by ICARDA, specializing in land and water management, crop improvement and plant breeding, geoinformatics, and socioeconomics.

Con una porción relevante de territorio cubierto de bosques, Honduras puede beneficiarse de implementar REDD+ tanto para contribuir a mitigar el cambio climático como para adaptarse a sus consecuencias. La adaptación al cambio climático es, sin lugar a dudas, una prioridad para el país, ya que éste ha afrontado eventos climáticos severos, incluyendo huracanes e inundaciones.

An Assessment of the Economics of Land Degradation for Improved Land Management in Central Asia
Inception and Training Workshop

23 - 25 February 2015
Antalya, Turkey

Bolivia cuenta con una importante superficie de bosques, mayormente en su región sub-tropical y tropical. La deforestación alcanza aproximadamente 200.000 hectáreas por año, sobre todo en las tierras bajas, mientras que la degradación de bosques es más acentuada en los bosques andinos.

This publication, ‘Island Innovations – UNDP and GEF: Leveraging the Environment for the Sustainable Development of SIDS’, demonstrates that far from succumbing to these challenges, SIDS have time and again risen to the task of managing their fragile environments to meet their sustainable development goals.

Land has many uses. It provides water, food and energy. It is used to create wealth and employment and grow economies. And it provides other, often less obvious and tangible, services such as conserving biodiversity, storing carbon, purifying and storing water. It even regulates the Earth’s climate, for instance, by absorbing the heat from the sun.

Land degradation refers to any reduction or loss in the biological or economic productive capacity of the land resource base. It is generally caused by human activities, exacerbated by natural processes, and often magnified by and closely intertwined with climate change and biodiversity loss.

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.

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.

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.