Making sense of research for sustainable land management
This book (PDF), published by CDE/WOCAT and UFZ, provides evidence of how practices of sustainable land management can be adapted to specific local and regional contexts. It is based on the work of more than 600 scientists and synthesizes experiences and practice-relevant results from a seven year German funded international research programme on interactions between land management, climate change, and ecosystems and their services. It includes 30 technologies and approaches documented using WOCAT standardized tools. The book shows how research can support decision makers and advisors from a variety of sectors – at national, regional, and local levels – in comprehending the complexity of sustainable land management. It assists them in identifying and developing suitable solutions for prevention or restoration of land degradation, improvement of yields, increasing resilience in production systems, and making water management more efficient. A special focus targets measures for climate change adaptation and mitigation. The examples in this book confirm that preservation of ecosystems and the provision of their services can be accomplished within production systems (land sharing), and outside of them
through the intensification on productive land – while leaving other land out of production (land sparing). The question is not ’either / or‘. It rather is how to integrate both within the available space of this planet.