27 June 2016
Land Degradation, Desertification and Climate Change: Assessing, Anticipating and Adapting to Future Change
UN Photo/Martine Perret
story highlights

Climate change and land degradation can drive or intensify one another through both positive and negative feedbacks.

It is therefore surprising that land degradation and climate change are still largely dealt with separately.

Climate change and land degradation can drive or intensify one another through both positive and negative feedbacks. Higher temperatures, changing rainfall patterns and more extreme weather resulting from climate change can combine with human-induced drivers of change to fuel degradation processes, such as soil erosion. In turn, land degradation reduces the benefits and services that ecosystems provide to society, with potentially devastating consequences for food production, human wellbeing and the climate. This is because many forms of land degradation release carbon into the atmosphere, exacerbating climate change. Around a quarter of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions come from land use activities. It is therefore surprising that land degradation and climate change are still largely dealt with separately.

While much is known about the processes and effects of land degradation and climate change as individual problems, little is understood about the links between them. Less still is known about how these processes are likely to interact in different socio-ecological systems around the world and what this means for society’s abilities to adapt to these interlinked issues. Even within international policy, efforts have been limited in addressing land degradation and climate change in a joined-up way. While the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the new climate deal agreed by Parties to the UNFCCC in Paris in December 2015 provide a new and useful opportunity to harness synergy in actions addressing these problems, moving from policy rhetoric to substantive on-the-ground action remains challenging.

To understand where targeted interventions that address climate change and land degradation would be most valuable, it is important to understand how vulnerable a particular community or ecosystem is to the combined effects of these two challenges. This can be achieved by identifying how exposed the system is to the two processes. If the system is exposed, we then need to understand its sensitivity to those changes. If the system is both exposed and sensitive, we need to assess how easy or difficult it is to adapt. Adaptation encompasses a range of actions that can involve changing the ways in which communities and ecosystems interact and function so that livelihoods and wellbeing can be maintained. Systems that are able to adapt easily are considered resilient; those that are constrained in their adaptations can be considered vulnerable.

Some actions (e.g. ecosystem-based adaptations) can tackle both climate change and land degradation; reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide while preventing and reversing degradation or rehabilitating and restoring already degraded areas. At the same time, these adaptations can protect livelihoods and biodiversity. Scientific research can play an important role in identifying and understanding adaptation options that offer potential to deliver ‘multiple wins’. And by combining scientific measurements and understandings with locally-held, contextual and experiential knowledge, it can help ensure that adaptations are socially and culturally appropriate. It can also help to overcome some of the barriers that restrict adaptation.

Once adaptations are in place, it is important to assess whether the measures being taken are successful. This is vital if future adaptive options are not to be eroded, and if exposure or sensitivity to new challenges is not to increase. Again, multi-stakeholder approaches that bring together different groups can help in monitoring and evaluating the success of adaptation options. Such assessment can also identify where the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ are, in relation to both the problems themselves and as a consequence of the adaptations being undertaken.

We know that climate change will increase the number and length of droughts in many parts of the world and that growing global demand for food is putting greater pressure than ever before on our land. Increasingly, under extreme weather conditions, substantial losses will be experienced and costs will be incurred. The situation is already happening in many parts of the world. If we do not find ways of tackling the combined challenges of land degradation and climate change, many of the world’s most vulnerable communities and ecosystems may face both human and natural disaster.

No matter how successfully we mitigate climate change, further changes to our climate are unavoidable. Similarly, ongoing degradation in some areas is inevitable. This makes it vital to better understand a range of possible response options. By placing people at the center of analysis, it allows identification of a variety of ways in which different groups within society can work together to anticipate, assess and successfully adapt to future changes resulting from the dual problems of land degradation and climate change.

 

Lindsay C. Stringer is a Professor of Environment & Development at the University of Leeds, and Mark Reed is a HEFCE N8 Professor of Socio-Technical Innovation at Newcastle University. Their book, ‘Land Degradation, Desertification and Climate Change: Anticipating, Assessing and Adapting to Future Change,’ was published by Routledge with the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in May 2016. To request review copies please contact Megan Smith at megan.smith@taylorandfrancis.com.

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