5 September 2018: The UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has unveiled a checklist for Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) Transformative Projects and Programmes (TPP). The guidance aims to ensure that LDN projects are based on the sound scientific guidelines and human rights principles, as set out in the Convention’s Scientific Conceptual Framework for LDN.

According to the UNCCD, the LDN concept represents a paradigm shift in land management policies and practices by providing a framework to counterbalance the expected loss of productive land with the recovery of degraded areas. To date, more than 110 countries have embarked on national processes to set and implement voluntary LDN targets as part of their contribution to the third target under SDG 15 (life on land).

The LDN checklist aims to ensure a coherent and comprehensive approach to transformative LDN projects, and specifically seeks to ensure that proposals are gender responsive and comply with the environmental and social safeguard standards of the target funding sources. The draft checklist is intended for use by country-level project developers and their technical and financial partners and will undergo further refinement following field testing.

The six defining features of LDN Transformative Projects and Programmes include features that: are fundamental to LDN, such as employing a landscape approach by choosing an area large enough to involve multiple land units of a variety of land types; deliver multiple benefits, such creating linkages to multiple SDGs by designing interventions that generate multiple environmental, economic and social benefits; promote responsible and inclusive governance, such as by safeguarding land rights of local land users; promote the scale out and up of what works, such as by employing science based and local and indigenous knowledge; enhance (sub)national ownership and capacities, such as by identifying and employing capacity development mechanisms such as public awareness, education and capacity building
campaigns; and leverage innovative finance (especially private sector), including by preparing for an investment component that leverages private sector mobilization.

The checklist was developed by the Global Mechanism of the UNCCD in collaboration with the UNCCD Secretariat. Experts serving on the Science-Policy Interface (SPI) of the UNCCD conducted the scientific review. [UNCCD News Release] [Draft Checklist] [Publication: Scientific Conceptual Framework for Land Degradation Neutrality] [Checklist Webpage] [UNCCD LDN Webpage] [SDG Knowledge Hub Story on Launch of LDN Fund]