Meeting the Sustainable Development Goals requires drylands sustainability. Treating drylands as global environmental commons enables better tailored governance responses. Key nested governance elements for drylands involve setting goals, monitoring and delivering sanctions across scales. The present global governance system for drylands only partially delivers these elements.

Sustainable land governance requires that all members of a community, both women and men, have equal rights and say in decisions that affect their collectively-held lands. Unfortunately, women around the world have less land ownership and weaker land rights than men – but this can change, and this report shows ways how that can be done.

La gobernanza sostenible de la tierra requiere que todos los miembros de una comunidad, tanto mujeres como hombres, tengan los mismos derechos y voz en las decisiones que afectan a sus tierras de propiedad colectiva.

 To benefit from the underutilised potential of urban land resources, the introduction and improvement of land registration and cadastral systems have been advocated. However, evidence from empirical research in a number of developing economies including those in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) continues to show mixed or inconclusive outcomes from the implementation and operations of such systems.

On Earth, land is the most vital resource from which living things derive their essential necessities. There are many methods for managing and maintaining this vital resource in a sustainable manner, but it is more important to first understand the root cause of malfunctioning land management strategies.

In an era of global warming, long-standing challenges for rural populations, including land inequality, poverty and food insecurity, risk being exacerbated by the effects of climate change. Innovative and effective approaches, such as Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA), are required to alleviate these environmental pressures without hampering efficiency.

The failure of rural economies to deliver decent work to their young people affects national economies, threatens political stability, nurtures extremism and causes socially and economically disruptive migration. Globally, youth are two to three times more likely than adults to be unemployed.

The implementation of Agenda 2063 has gathered momentum at all levels. The continent has made some remarkable
progress towards attaining the goals defined in Agenda 2063’s First Ten-Year Implementation Plan as outlined in this
report.

Resources, including minerals and metals, underpin the world’s economies for almost all sectors, providing crucial raw materials for their industrial processes. Despite efforts to decouple economies from resource use towards a circular economy, demand for extractive resources will continue to grow on the back of emerging economies.

FOOD SYSTEMS ARE EVOLVING QUICKLY TO MEET GROWING AND CHANGING DEMAND, BUT THEY ARE NOT SERVING EVERYONE’S NEEDS. As we modernize food systems to make them climate-smart, healthy, and sustainable, we must also strive to make them inclusive of smallholders, youth, women, conflict-affected people, and other poor and marginalized people.

Decisions over tenure – who gets access to land, fisheries and forests, for how long, and under what conditions – have important implications for people’s livelihoods. Spatial planning procedures can have a considerable impact on the legitimate tenure rights of the respective rights holders and, in the long term, can affect livelihoods.