This is the program of the closure workshop "Sustainable Land Management to Achieve Land Degradation Neutrality: Options-by-Context Approach and Tools" of the project "Impact Evaluation of SLM Options to Achieve Land Degradation Neutrality".

Conservation projects have often been criticised for creating global benefits while causing negative impacts on local livelihoods. Ecosystem services approaches have been seen as one way to change this by focussing explicitly on maintaining ecosystems for human well-being of stakeholders at various scales. However, ecosystem services approaches have often ignored trade-offs between groups of people and issues of power and do not automatically lead to better outcomes in terms of human well-being.

Las plantas silvestres alimenticias son un componente esencial de la dieta de la población rural en distintas partes del mundo, teniendo un rol importante en su seguridad alimentaria y diversidad nutricional. Dada la alarmante disminución de los bosques, la colecta de estas especies ocurre cada vez más en ecosistemas antropogénicos, donde las comunidades activamente las manejan para asegurar su disponibilidad y acceso.

The Kalu Ganga Basin in Sri Lanka is generally flooded once a year. A network of low-lying lands acts as natural retention and storage that captures floodwater, minimizing damage. An increase in the flood frequency has been observed in recent years. It is commonly perceived that this increase is caused by a rise in the frequency and severity of ‘very wet’ precipitation events. We conclude that land-use changes may have played a larger role in generating floods.

With current rates of land degradation reaching ten to twelve million ha per year, there is an urgent need to scale up and out successful, profitable and resource-efficient sustainable land management practices to maintain the health and resilience of the land that humans depend on. As much as 500 million out of two billion ha of degraded land, mainly in developing countries, have restoration potential, offering an immediate target for restoration and rehabilitation initiatives.1 In the past, piecemeal approaches to achieving sustainable land management have had limited impact.