The Secretariat of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has released a publication, titled 'Land Degradation Neutrality: Resilience in an Unstable World,' which reviews efforts to define and identify how to deliver a land degradation neutral world (LDNW) as part of the post-2015 development agenda.
12 September 2014: The Secretariat of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has released a publication, titled ‘Land Degradation Neutrality: Resilience at Local, National and Regional Levels,’ which reviews efforts to define and identify how to deliver a land degradation neutral world (LDNW) as part of the post-2015 development agenda.
The outcome document from the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, or Rio+20) called for the international community to “strive to achieve a land-degradation neutral world in the context of sustainable development.” The proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) developed by the Open Working Group (OWG), which the UN General Assembly decided would serve as “the main basis” for the SDGs in the post-2015 development agenda, include a target to, “by 2020, combat desertification, and restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought and floods, and strive to achieve a land-degradation neutral world.”
The UNCCD publication presents issues discussed by the Intergovernmental Working Group (IWG), which was created by the UNCCD Conference of Parties (COP) to follow up on the Rio+20 outcome. The publication also notes that the IWG’s “current working definition of land degradation neutrality is: a state whereby the amount of healthy and productive land resources, necessary to support ecosystem services, remains stable or increases within specified temporal and spatial scales.”
In order to better understand this aspirational target, the publication notes that the UNCCD Secretariat has launched, with the support of the Republic of Korea, the ‘Land Degradation Neutrality’ project, which “aims to provide technical assistance to a voluntary group of 14 countries with diverse socio-ecological conditions for mainstreaming land degradation neutrality in the process of aligning their National Action Programmes to the UNCCD’s Strategic Plan.”
The publication also reviews overlaps among the objectives of the three Rio Conventions (UNCCD, UNFCCC and Convention on Biological Diversity, CBD), and notes benefits of adopting common land management policies and practices.
The publication indicates that, in 2015, the 12th session of the UNCCD Conference of the Parties (COP 12) will consider land degradation neutrality and the work of the IWG. [Publication: Land Degradation Neutrality: Resilience at Local, National and Regional Levels][UNCCD News on Land Degradation Neutrality Activities][IISD RS Story on UNGA decision regarding OWG proposal]