Land Degradation

The international community is working to halt and reverse land degradation, restore degraded ecosystems, and sustainably manage our resources through a commitment to land degradation neutrality (LDN).

The concept of LDN emerged from the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in 2012. LDN responds to an immediate challenge: intensifying the production of food, fuel, and fiber to meet future demand without further degrading our finite land resource base. In other words, LDN envisions a world where human activity has a neutral, or even positive, impact on the land.

In 2015, the 12th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP12) adopted 35 decisions related to desertification, land degradation, and drought. These included how to pursue LDN within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and how to align UNCCD goals and the action of Parties with the SDGs. As a follow-up, the UNCCD Secretariat and the Global Mechanism established the LDN Target Setting Program, which has been enshrined in the SDGs as target 15.3 on achieving a land degradation neutral world by 2030.

As a financial mechanism for UNCCD, the GEF is supporting land degradation neutrality implementation. Initially, the LDN Target Setting Program provided technical assistance to a voluntary group of more than 60 countries to help mainstream LDN into their National Action Programs and plan recovery of landscapes.

Through its LDN implementation projects, the GEF supports countries to achieve LDN in the short- and medium-term.

More than 120 countries have set voluntary LDN targets as a result of this initiative.

Sustainable land management (SLM) is defined by the UN 1992 Rio Earth Summit as “the use of land resources, including soil, water, animals and plant, for the production of goods to meet changing human needs, while simultaneously ensuring the long-term productive potential.”

For many countries, the challenge of achieving SLM comes down to trade-offs between short-term profitability and long-term sustainability. Those ready to adopt SLM approaches may face economic and institutional barriers or lack knowledge and technology innovations to overcome them. In most developing countries, SLM can open up major opportunities for both the land as a natural resource and the people who depend on it.

The three Rio Conventions have overlapping concerns regarding biodiversity loss, land degradation, and deforestation, including implications for livelihoods and food security. As a result, there is potential for greater synergy among the Convention for Biological Diversity (CBD), the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Through adoption of SLM, countries can implement the conventions in a comprehensive way that address climate change, introduce renewable energy technologies, and combat deforestation.

As financial mechanism of the Rio Conventions, the GEF is the world’s largest source of funding for SLM. The GEF channels most of its investments in SLM through the land degradation focal area. Investment priorities are aligned with the UNCCD objectives, enabling countries to deliver on commitments toward implementation of the convention. We help strengthen national-level processes for SLM such as capacity building, institutional collaboration, knowledge management, and mainstreaming across sectors. On the ground, GEF projects improve livelihoods and economic well-being of local communities, and preserve and restore ecosystems.

The Global Environment Facility's land degradation focal area strategy for the GEF-8 replenishment cycle (2022-2026) aligns with the GEF’s vision to achieve healthy and resilient ecosystems by addressing agro-ecosystems in production landscapes. The goal of the land degradation focal area is to avoid, reduce, and reverse land degradation, desertification, and mitigate the effects of drought. Sustainable land management is the overarching approach to achieve this goal. GEF projects promote the wider application and scaling of SLM interventions that improve productivity and maintain or improve flow of agro-ecosystem services that underpin food production and livelihoods.

GEF-eligible investments focus on:

1. Agro-ecological methods and approaches including conservation agriculture, agroforestry, and agro-silvo-pastoral practices.
2. Improving rangeland management and sustainable pastoralism, regulating livestock grazing pressure through sustainable intensification and rotational grazing systems, increasing diversity of animal and grass species, and managing fire disturbance.
3. Strengthening community-based natural resource management, including legitimate tenure rights recognition and safeguards.
4. Integrated watershed management, including wetlands where SLM interventions can improve hydrological functions and services for agro-ecosystem productivity.
5. Implementing integrated pest management approaches to improve soil fertility and water management.

Desertification and drought put livelihoods and entire ecosystems at risk and, in extreme cases, cause famine, displacement, and conflict. Every year, 12 million hectares of land become unproductive due to desertification and drought, and the livelihoods of more than 1 billion people in some 100 countries are threatened by desertification. Drought is one of the major drivers of global food and water insecurity, affecting agricultural production and access to food and water. Drought can, in extreme cases, force people to abandon their land, resorting to migration as a last livelihood strategy. 

Dryland areas are particularly vulnerable to desertification, land degradation, and drought events. They make up 41 percent of the Earth’s surface, with populations in drylands projected to increase by 43 percent—from 2.7 billion in 2010 to 4.0 billion in 2050. Drylands face governance challenges such as low human resource capacity (e.g., low education attainment), low investment of public resources, weak penetration of government services, and insecure land tenure and resource rights for people in vulnerable situations such as women, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and youth.

Climate change exacerbates desertification processes and drought and leads to variations in yields and income from agriculture, threatening the resilience of agro-ecosystems and stability of food production systems. In addition to meteorological causes, drought is aggravated by unsustainable land management, particularly degradation of the vegetative cover and soil.

Making people and productive landscapes resilient to drought is a core mandate of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which is fully supported by the Global Environment Facility through its strategy, and relevant programs and projects.

Since its inception, the GEF has invested about $531 million in 107 projects/programs related to drought mitigation/adaptation. The portfolio includes 60 different countries from all UNCCD Annexes and regional and global projects/programs.

Focal area contributions come from climate change, land degradation, international waters, and biodiversity, making the portfolio truly integrated. Indeed, proactive drought management is a complex issue that needs to be addressed through multi-sectoral and integrated approaches, reflecting meteorological, environmental, socio-economic, and development issues.

GEF investments in proactive drought management show a steady upward trend, peaking in the seventh replenishment cycle (GEF-7) with $176 million, and with GEF-8 investments likely to be higher at the end of its cycle in 2026. Starting in GEF-8 and in response to UNCCD COP decisions, the GEF is supporting the formulation and updating of national drought plans. Countries increasingly utilize their available GEF resources to implement elements of these national plans through projects focusing on drought mitigation and adaptation, such as in Mali, Namibia, Mauritania, and Argentina.

As another example, the GEF-7 Dryland Sustainable Landscapes Impact Program aims to avoid, reduce, and reverse further degradation, desertification, and deforestation of land and ecosystems in drylands through the sustainable management of production landscapes. The program is transforming the management of drylands in selected regions and countries, establishing the basis for sustainable dryland management at regional and global levels. The program is being implemented with a specific focus on three dryland regions: the Miombo and Mopane ecosystems of southern Africa (with participating countries Angola, Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe); the savannas of West Africa (Burkina Faso); and the temperate grasslands, riparian forests, and shrublands of Central Asia (Kazakhstan and Mongolia).

Healthy landscapes support a huge variety of land uses — from agriculture and agroforestry to wildlife reserves and ecological corridors to forests and plantations. They provide clean water, food, and materials to build shelter for wildlife and humans alike. And they provide livelihoods for hundreds of millions of people.

Landscape restoration helps to reverse land degradation, combat climate change, and prevent biodiversity loss. It also addresses poverty as it can quickly provide financial reflow, create jobs, and is financially viable in the long run, promoting climate adaptation, food security, and increasing livelihood opportunities.

For all these reasons, landscape restoration has become a priority on the international policy agenda:

• The UNFCC, CBD, and UNCCD have all identified restoration as an important component of reaching their goals.
• The Bonn Challenge seeks to restore 350 million hectares of the world’s deforested lands by 2030. More than 60 countries or jurisdictions have made pledges to the Bonn Challenge.
• Initiative 20x20, which will also support the Bonn Challenge, aimed to restore 20 million hectares in Latin America and the Caribbean by 2020, and 50 million hectares by 2030.
• The Africa Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100), launched at the Global Landscapes Forum in Paris in December 2015, has a target of restoring 100 million hectares across the continent by 2030.
• Initiatives such as The Global Partnership on Forest and Landscape Restoration unite governments, organizations, communities, and individuals with a common goal: restoring the world’s degraded and deforested lands. 
• The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration aims to halt the degradation of ecosystems and restore them to achieve global goals. The UN Decade from 2021 through 2030 will build a strong global movement to ramp up restoration.

In GEF-8, the land degradation focal area enables countries to invest in land restoration through project activities aligned with Objective 2 of the Programming Directions:

1. Restore agro-ecosytem services and avoid the reduction of trees and vegetative cover.
2. Restore forests, avoid forest loss and degradation, including sustainable forest management (SFM). 

GEF projects invest in activities appropriate to local socio-economic conditions to improve vegetative cover and its functionality, assist natural regeneration of woodlands and planting of community woodlots, help establish shelterbelts, agro-forestry and agro-silvo-pastoral models, and practices to enhance soil and water conservation, erosion control, and ground water recharge. Countries can direct their investments also through the GEF-8 Ecosystem Restoration Integrated Program, which aims to generate multiple environmental and socioeconomic benefits by applying integrated approaches to restore degraded ecosystems. It focuses on restoration of ecosystem types with a high potential to generate multiple benefits, especially in landscapes with high values for biodiversity.

Another GEF supported restoration flagship is the Great Green Wall Initiative. It aims to establish a green belt of productive lands and forests along the edge of the Sahara Desert to battle desertification and soil degradation, while tackling poverty. It focuses on a strip of land of 15 km wide and 7,100 km long from Dakar to Djibouti. The Great Green Wall has the potential of restoring landscapes in 11 participating countries.

The GEF supported about 10 million hectares of degraded land under restoration through sustainable forest management projects and programs with tree planting, natural regeneration, and agroforestry systems in GEF-6 and GEF-7. The GEF-8 target for restoration is an additional 10 million hectares, with the majority of contributions coming from the Integrated Programs.