A new United Nations report warns that a third of the planet’s land is now severely degraded thanks to a doubling in the consumption of natural resources over the past 30 years. Some 15 billion trees and 24 billion tonnes of fertile soil are lost each year, according to the Global Land Outlook (GLO), launched by the secretariat of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), at the meeting of States parties taking place in Ordos, China. The GLO takes a critical look at financial and socio-economic values of land, and its impact on the poor.

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 comprise LDN is to reinforce responsible governance of land tenure. Land rights are a key factor for achieving LDN. This publication by the UNCCD CSO Panel aims to analyze and highlight the linkages between land rights and land degradation with the objective of offering policy recommendations to enhance land rights for both the prevention of land degradation and the recovery of degraded lands.

The Scientific Conceptual Framework for Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) provides a scientific foundation for understanding, implementing and monitoring LDN. It has been designed to create a bridge between the vision and the practical implementation of LDN, by defining LDN in operational terms. The conceptual framework is a product of the UNCCD Science-Policy Interface. Pursuit of LDN requires effort to avoid further net loss of the land-based natural capital relative to a reference state, or baseline.