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January 16th, 2016

Economics of land degradation and improvement: A global assessment for sustainable development

Published by IFPRI, University of Bonn,

This book (PDF) published by IFPRI and the University of Bonn argues that sustainable soil management and responsible land governance have great potential for being one of the corner stones to achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs). This volume deals with land degradation, which is stretching to about 30% of the total global land area. About three billion people reside in these degraded lands. However, the impact of land degradation is especially severe on livelihoods of the poor who heavily depend on natural resources. The annual global cost of land degradation due to land use and cover change and lower cropland and rangeland productivity is estimated to be about 300 billion USD. The results in this volume indicate that reversing land degradation trends makes both economic sense, and has multiple social and environmental benefits. On average, one US dollar investment into restoration of degraded land returns five US dollars. The findings of the country case studies call for increased investments into the rehabilitation and restoration of degraded lands, including through such institutional and policy measures as strengthening community participation for sustainable land management, enhancing government effectiveness and rule of law, improving access to markets and rural services, and securing land tenure.  The assessment in this volume has been conducted at a time when there is an elevated interest in private land investments and when global efforts to achieve sustainable development objectives have intensified. In this regard, the results of this volume can contribute significantly to the ongoing policy debate and efforts to design strategies for achieving sustainable development goals and related efforts to address land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.

You can also read the synopsis (PDF).

Curated from link.springer.com