Processes of globalization have generated new opportunities for smallholders to participate in profitable global agro-commodity markets. This participation however is increasingly being shaped by differentiated capabilities to comply with emerging public and private quality and safety standards. The dynamics within Indonesia’s oil palm sector illustrate well the types of competitive challenges smallholders face in their integration into global agro-commodity chains.

City planners, urban innovators and researchers are increasingly working on ‘future city’ initiatives to investigate the physical, social and political aspects of harmonized urban living. Despite this, sustainability principles and the importance of urban groundwater are lacking in future city visions. Using London as a case study, the importance of groundwater for cities is highlighted and a range of future city interventions may impact on groundwater are reviewed.

Oil palm plantations in Indonesia have been linked to substantial deforestation in the 1990s and 2000s, though recent studies suggest that new plantations are increasingly developed on non-forest land. Without nationwide data to establish recent baseline trends, the impact of commitments to eliminate deforestation from palm oil supply chains could therefore be overestimated. We examine the area and proportion of plantations replacing forests across Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Papua up to 2015, and map biophysically suitable areas for future deforestation-free expansion.

In the last decade, there have been a number of global/regional targets and initiatives to halt and reverse land degradation and restore degraded land. Starting in 2010, these include the CBD’s Aichi Biodiversity Targets, one of which aims to restore at least 15% of degraded ecosystems; the Bonn Challenge and its regional initiatives to restore more than 150 million hectares; and most recently the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The pressure on land is growing in many regions of the world, due to the increasing demand for arable crops, meat and dairy products, bio-energy and timber, and is exacerbated by land degradation and climate change. This policy report provides scenario projections for the UNCCD Global Land Outlook, exploring future changes to the use and condition of land and the resulting impacts on food, water, climate change and biodiversity.

Becoming land degradation neutral is not simply about restoring degraded lands. It is about self interest making sure the land can still provide food and fresh water for us, our children, and to the third and fourth generations. It is about giving every child, from Mongolia to Afghanistan and from Ethiopia to China, the fighting chance for a better life. If this all sounds too good to be true, read this book.

UNDP’s support to countries on sustainable land management and restoration is designed to enhance livelihoods, secure food and water, build resilience and increase carbon storage and sequestration. Drawing on over 40 years of experience and expertise, UNDP assists countries to integrate land and related environmental concerns into national and sectoral development plans and strategies, secure resources, and implement programmes that advance inclusive, sustainable growth and development.

The Great Green Wall is one of the main vehicles for delivering the Sustainable Development Goals and the Rio conventions in the Sahel. Biodiversity is the foundation of the Great Green Wall in many ways, determining soil productivity and water cycles and providing the foundation for risk management and resilient ecosystems. The Great Green Wall can make a major contribution to achieving many of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The authors briefly review how microbial biotechnology can contribute to improve activities aiming to restore degraded drylands and to combat their desertification, which are an integral part of the Sustainable Development Goal 15 of the 2030 Agenda. Microbial biotechnology offers notable promise to improve restoration actions based on the use of biocrust‐forming engineered cyanobacteria, which play key roles in maintaining ecosystem structure and functioning in drylands worldwide.

Land is the foundation of our life; stopping the critical loss of land and turning this trend around is critical for the future prosperity and security of humankind. The Sustainable Development Goal 15 “Life on land” commits world leaders to work together to achieve land degradation neutrality (LDN) for safeguarding life on land. One of the objectives that comprises LDN is to reinforce responsible governance of land tenure.

Sustainable management of the natural resource base is a fundamental issue to support global environmental benefits provided by ecosystem services, and to ensure agricultural production and ultimately food security and livelihoods. Assessing Land degradation is a major component of effective sustainable land management particularly in Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

Land is an essential building block of civilization yet its contribution to our quality of life is perceived and valued in starkly different and often incompatible ways. Conflicts about land use are intensifying in many countries. The world has reached a point where we must reconcile these differences and rethink the way in which we use and manage the land.