Land degradation occurs in all kinds of landscapes over the world, but the drivers of land degradation vary from region to region. Identifying these drivers at the appropriate spatial scale is an essential prerequisite for developing and implementing appropriate area-specific policies. In this study, we investigate nine different driving factors in three categories: human disturbance, water condition, and urbanisation.

Public policy makers from developed and developing countries, at all levels (national, regional, local), have the opportunity to take leadership as FLR financing champions. Even without controlling private capital, they can support resource mobilization in a number of ways This publication shares the experiences of some initiatives from around the world which public policy makers can learn from and adapt.

FAO is pleased to announce the e-learning course on “Sustainable Land Management and Land Restoration”, which has been developed in collaboration with CIHEAM-Bari, WOCAT, ELD and University of Leeds.

Land-use planning (LUP), an instrument of land governance, is often employed to protect land and humans against natural and human-induced hazards, strengthen the resilience of land systems, and secure their sustainability. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) underlines the critical role of appropriate local action to address the global threat of land degradation and desertification (LDD) and calls for the use of local and regional LUP to combat LDD and achieve land degradation neutrality. The paper explores the challenges of putting this call into practice.

Land-use planning (LUP), an instrument of land governance, is often employed to protect land and humans against natural and human-induced hazards, strengthen the resilience of land systems, and secure their sustainability. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) underlines the critical role of appropriate local action to address the global threat of land degradation and desertification (LDD) and calls for the use of local and regional LUP to combat LDD and achieve land degradation neutrality. The paper explores the challenges of putting this call into practice.

Land degradation, particularly soil erosion, is currently a major challenge for Nepal. With a high rate of population growth, subsistence-based rural economy, and increasingly intense rainfall events in the monsoon season, Nepal is prone to several forms of land degradation, such as floods, landslides, and soil erosion.

Almost one-quarter of the world’s land area has been degraded over the past 50 years because of soil erosion, salinization, peatland and wetland drainage, and forest degradation. The resulting damage, in terms of lost ecosystem goods and services, costs the world an estimated US$6.3 trillion a year.

Forestry systems, including afforestation and reforestation land uses, are prevalent in drylands and aimed at restoring degraded lands and halting desertification. However, an increasing amount of literature has alerted potentially adverse ecological and environmental impacts of this land use, risking a wide range of ecosystem functions and services. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the potentially adverse implications of dryland forestry and highlight the caution needed when planning and establishing such systems.

Discussions on the relationships between forests and water have primarily focused on the biophysical nature of these relationships. However, as issues such as land degradation affect the ability of forests to provide water-related ecosystem services resulting in water insecurity, the human dimension of the forest–water nexus has become more evident. This has resulted in the identification of the forest–water nexus as an issue that requires urgent recognition within major international policy processes and where knowledge gaps on the global state of the nexus exist.

Land degradation is a globally recognized problem and restoration of degraded land is currently high on the international agenda. Forest landscape restoration and other restorative ecosystem management activities are important measures that contribute towards reaching the objectives of the Bonn Challenge, which aims to restore 350 million hectares by 2030. In this context, many restoration projects are being planned and implemented in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).

Climate and land use change can influence susceptibility to erosion and consequently land degradation. The aim of this study was to investigate in the baseline and a future period, the land use and climate change effects on soil erosion at an important dam watershed occupying a strategic position on the narrow Strait of Hormuz. The future climate change at the study area was inferred using statistical downscaling and validated by the Canadian earth system model (CanESM2).