Abstract
Land degradation continues to be an enormous challenge to human societies, reducing food security, emitting greenhouse gases and aerosols, driving the loss of biodiversity, polluting water, and undermining a wide range of ecosystem services beyond food supply and water and climate regulation. Climate change will exacerbate several degradation processes. Investment in diverse restoration efforts, including sustainable agricultural and forest land management, as well as land set aside for conservation wherever possible, will generate co-benefits for climate change mitigation and adaptation and morebroadly for human and societal well-being and the economy. This review highlights the magnitude of the degradation problem and some of the key challenges for ecological restoration. There are biophysical as well as societal limits to restoration. Better integrating policies to jointly address poverty, land degradation, and greenhouse gas emissions and removals is fundamental to reducing many existing barriers and contributing to climate-resilient sustainable development.
Highlights
Wild forests Used forests Grazing, livestock high density Grazing, livestock low density Cropland, livestock high density Cropland, livestock low density Residential Wild barren land
These analyses demonstrate that regionally adapted restoration activities have large potential to support climate change mitigation while simultaneously reducing climate change impacts on ecosystems and people, with added benefits for multiple ecosystem services
Many synergies exist between restoration and key international policy areas that relate to nature-based solutions for climate change mitigation and adaptation (UNFCCC), avoiding and reducing degradation and restoring degraded land (UNCCD), and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and its Aichi Biodiversity Targets
Summary
Regional and global trends in the principal land cover classes and production and diets as an example driver of land-use change. Land degradation: a negative trend in land condition caused by direct or indirect human-induced processes, including anthropogenic climate change, expressed as long-term reduction or loss of at least one of the following: biological productivity, ecological integrity, or value to humans. A particular challenge in providing solutions to halt and reverse degradation arises from the majority of the people affected living in poverty in developing countries [3]. The impacts of degradation extend beyond the local land surface and societies, affecting marine and freshwater systems, as well as people and ecosystems far away from the location of degradation. Avoiding, reducing, and reversing land degradation needs to be part of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies, with many possible co-benefits for ecosystems and human societies
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