Alex Rose-Innes
Those involved with the United Nations (UN) sustainable development policy had learnt many lessons over the last 50 years. The International Institute for Sustainable Development had recently published their expert report on land degradation neutrality.
The report focused on loss of productive land and recovery of degraded areas in an effort to ensure food security, energy needs, land tenure, gender equality as well as access to clean water and biodiversity on the African continent.
The Birth of International Land Governance in the Seventies
Fifty years ago in Sweden, the UN held the first Conference on the Human Environment where, over two decades, 100 000 people died in the Sahel due to severe drought, food shortages and disease, Due to mismanagement of natural resources and overpopulation.
The Stockholm Plan of Action called for international cooperative research on soil degradation. It recognised 20 African regions wherein economic and social factors contributed to soil degradation and where payment of inadequate prices for agriculture produce of developing countries, kept farmers locked in poverty.
In 1977, the UN Conference on Desertification (UNCOD) adopted a non-binding Plan of Action to Combat Desertification (PACD) aimed at improving land-use practices and social and economic welfare at the national level and in rural areas and local communities. The PACD acknowledged the local specificity of desertification and the need to incorporate rural land users when planning policy responses.
Despite its lofty goals, PACD turned out to be ineffective as a result of lack of political will and funding. Two decades later, implementation efforts were still not appropriate to the realities of farmers and communities on the ground. Increasingly, experts suggested the circumstances surrounding “desertification” were too locally specific to be effectively addressed with regional schemes conceived solely by governments and international organisations.
However, the PACD boosted dryland science and scientists discovered human impact to be not the only problem. Studies showed that climate variations and changes in global sea surface temperatures had an impact on rainfall patterns, but land degradation continued.
At the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit), African countries mounted a campaign for a global convention to combat desertification. This called for the UN General Assembly to establish an intergovernmental negotiating committee with a view to be finalised by June 1994.
The first sustainable development convention
Two years later, governments adopted the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). The Convention, which is often called the first sustainable development convention, is committed to improve living conditions for people in drylands, to maintain and restore land and soil productivity and to mitigate the effects of drought. The UNCCD embraced local-level, community-based actions and knowledge and called for national governments to channel a certain degree of authority and resources to local land users and non-governmental organizations (NGO’s).
During the UNCCD’s first fifteen years, most countries affected by desertification developed national action programs in line with the Convention, but implementation was slow. The UNCCD lacked financial support to implement its programmes. A growing need for more scientific knowledge became necessary to drive the work of the Convention and communicate such knowledge in policy-relevant ways for decision-makers and landowners to understand and take steps to restore degraded land and prevent further degradation. However, UNCCD’s policies, procedures, and programmes suffered from the absence of a clear overarching goal and quantitative, time-bound targets to guide action and effect measurable progress.
A land degradation-neutral (LDN) world
The UNCCD Executive Secretary at the time, Luc Gnacadja, among others, proposed a new concept – a land degradation-neutral world. This proposal was taken up by the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in June 2012. The Future We Want called for achieving a land degradation-neutral world in the context of sustainable development.
In 2015, the global objective to achieve land degradation neutrality (LDN) was incorporated into the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target.
Combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought and floods towards a land degradation-neutral world – 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as Sustainable Development Goal
LDN implementation efforts required a firm grounding of the neutrality concept in national policies and procedures and a first step was to develop a Scientific Conceptual Framework for Land Degradation Neutrality to provide a scientific foundation for understanding, implementing, and monitoring LDN, was implemented. It was designed to create a bridge between the vision and the practical implementation of LDN.
LDN Target Setting Programme established
Policymakers had to incorporate LDN in national agenda settings and state budgets, with the UNCCD financing a pilot project to assist 14 countries to set voluntary targets in 2014. This led to the LDN Target Setting Programme, aiding countries through a structured process to help leverage, assess, measure, and achieve their LDN commitments. To date, 128 countries had committed to set LDN targets.
Land Tenure explained
This refers to the relationship among people with respect to land and defines conditions under which land can be occupied, held or managed, by whom, and for how long. There are different types of tenure; it may be based on written policies and laws (statutory land tenure) or on unwritten customs and practices (customary land tenure. Although land tenure security may not be sufficient to stop land degradation, land tenure insecurity often prevents farmers from adopting sustainable land management practices.
The UNCCD Secretariat estimates that 2.5 billion rural people derive their livelihoods from agriculture and natural resources. If people have land tenure security, they are more likely to have sustainable food security and sources of income. Secure land rights also enable the use of land as collateral to access other opportunities, such as credit. Moreover, landowners manage their land better than tenants, reducing land degradation.
Gender Equality
Strengthening women’s land rights and equal access to resources increase food security, improve livelihoods, reduce poverty and drive investments in sustainable land management practices. However, in more than 50% of the world’s countries, laws or customs are barriers to female ownership or access to land. Evidence shows women’s share as agricultural land holders vary from 0.8% in Saudi Arabia to 51% in Cabo Verde, with an overall global average estimated at 12.8%
Almost one-third of global female employment is in agriculture. Women are at the frontline of LDN, struggling to salvage large areas of arable land affected by degradation. The inaugural 2017 UNCCD Gender Action Plan (GAP) mandated gender mainstreaming to advance the efforts of countries to achieve their LDN targets.
GAP outlined four priority areas:
- ensure women’s participation in decisions taken during design, planning, implementation and evaluation of LDN initiatives;
- integrate female economic empowerment in implementation activities to eradicate their extreme poverty;
- strengthen women’s land rights and access to resources; and
- Enhance women’s access to improved knowledge and technologies relating to effective UNCCD implementation, including LDN.
Support and Co-ordination
Experts say that even with strong policies in place, LDN policy implementation will not be successful if the main agency at national level lacks personnel and knowledge. Certain governments lack scientific knowledge and data to develop integrated land use planning, information on influences of global drivers such as climate change on national and local land use. Poor co-ordination between national governments and local authorities, as well as lack of knowledge and systems for enforcing, monitoring and evaluating LDN measures also prevent effective implementation. In 2019, some national governments still needed to create incentives and pathways for local officials, decision makers, land users and other stakeholders to become involved in planning processes
Funding
In order to rehabilitate 12 million hectares of degraded land per annum, traditional financial sources, official development assistance and national government resources are not sufficient.
With this in mind, the UNCCD created an independent Land Degradation Neutrality Fund (LDN Fund) to support large-scale rehabilitation of degraded land through sustainable and productive land management. Potential projects are required to be land-based and able to avoid, reduce, or reverse land degradation while producing financial returns.
The Future
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, governments, stakeholders and other partners had been making LDN a reality. At the same time, a number of related initiatives are underway.
The UNCCD Secretariat had demonstrated how land use change and land degradation is a primary driver for emerging infectious diseases. The 2020 report, Supporting the Global Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Land-based Solutions for Healthy People and a Healthy Planet, explained how land can move from being part of the pandemic problem to being central to the solution. The report argued that the foundation for building back better in the face of climate change and the pandemic must take future land-use decisions into account.
“Each of us holds the power to protect the land for every choice we make in our daily lives. And we can still choose to protect nature. By doing so, we in fact protect our future,” the UNCCD Executive Secretary, Ibrahim Thiaw, said.
