Grenada has been spearheading the fight against desertification at local, regional and global levels. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
ANKARA, Jun 18 2019 (IPS)

Businesses are being encouraged to follow the lead of the youth to halt desertification, reduce degradation, improve agricultural sustainability and restore damaged lands.

“The youth is a very particular case. The youth give me a lot of hope because I see their passion, and I see their vision,” head of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) Ibrahim Thiaw told IPS.

“For the youth it’s basically ‘I care for the planet, this is our future.’”

Each minute, 23 hectares of productive land and soil is lost to desertification, land degradation and drought, according to U.N. Environment.

Thiaw said when this happens young people are forced to leave their homeland, and most never return.

He said restoring land will help in reducing risks of irregular migration – a major component of population change in some countries.

According to a new U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs’ Population Division report launched on Monday, Jun. 17, between 2010 and 2020, 14 countries or areas will see a net inflow of more than one million migrants, while 10 countries will see a net outflow of similar magnitude.

“What is left for the young girl or young gentleman of Haiti if 98 percent of their forest have been degraded and they have barren hills that cannot generate food anymore? What is left for them to do but to flee?” Thiaw questioned.

“Therefore, restoring land would reduce migration, it will keep people on the ground, help them generate their own income and live their own lives. They don’t want to leave their families. They migrate because they have no choice. So, restoring land is also bringing stability in our countries.”

Like Haiti, Grenada – another Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member state – has seen its share of land degradation.

As countries observed World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought (WDCDD) on Monday, Jun. 17, Grenada’s Minister of Agriculture and Lands Yolande Bain-Horsford said while soils and land continue to play an integral role in the economic shift the island nation is experiencing today, these resources are under threat.

“The agricultural sector is a major contributor to national development through the provision of employment, household income, food and government revenues,” Bain-Horsford told IPS.

“As we boast of the importance of this sector to our economies, unfortunately we must face the harsh reality of the challenges facing the sector, which include land degradation, lack of sustainable farming practices, climatic variations and droughts.”

Bain-Horsford said Grenada has been spearheading the fight against desertification at local, regional and global levels.

Locally, the island nation has set ambitious targets to ensure it addresses and, in some cases, reverse the impacts of negative agricultural, construction, and other actions which lead to desertification.

Some of the actions taken include the Cabinet approving Grenada’s Voluntary Land Degradation Neutrality targets that should be achieved by 2030.

To achieve the targets, Grenada has agreed to;

• increase the fertility and productivity of 580 hectares of cropland by 2030, 
• transform 800 hectares of abandoned cropland into agroforestry by 2030, 
• implement soil conservation measures on 120 hectares of land by 2030, 
• the rehabilitation of 383 hectares of degraded land at Bellevue South in Carriacou by 2030, 
• the rehabilitation of 100 hectares of degraded forests in Grenada and Carriacou by 2030, and
• increase forest carbon stocks by 10 percent by 2030.

The island also completed and submitted its 2018 National Report on the state of land degradation, nationally linking it to gender and the Sustainable Development Goals 2030. 

But Thiaw said land restoration cannot be left in the hands of governments alone, explaining that it will not be sufficient.

With two billion hectares of land in need of restoration, the UNCCD head said the best solution would be for the governments to not only mobilise communities, but to mobilise private investments.

“As long as business does not see that investing on land and restoring land is a good business case, it will not happen,” Thiaw said.

“Governments will have to review some of the land tenure systems that they have. It may be just a concession saying if you restore this land, I will give you the concession over the land for the next 50 years or for the next 60 years. Then they can harvest and they will leave the land restored rather than leaving it barren.”

The government of Turkey is hosting three days of activities in observance of the 25^th anniversary of the UNCCD and the WDCDD.

Turkey’s Agriculture and Forestry Minister Bekir Pakdemirli said countries are facing a silent danger that constantly grows and threatens the planet.

“This danger is indeed more dangerous and more insidious than wars,” he said. “This danger that takes our lands away, makes them unusable and risks our future is nothing but desertification.”

Pakdemirli said just as desertification is a disaster that threatens the entire world regardless of national borders, degraded and destroyed lands pose a direct threat to the lives of people living on land-based activities.

He said these social problems sometimes force people to migrate, especially in countries such as Africa that are most affected by the consequences of desertification.

“Nobody wants to leave the land where they were born, grew up, and felt belonging to. Migration is a way to addressing the most desperate and needy situations,” Pakdemirli said

“In such cases, children and women are viewed as the most vulnerable category of victims. Therefore, before it is too late, we should take necessary measures before lands lose their productivity and become completely uninhabitable.

“While taking these measures, we must act in unison and adopt the principle that all lands around the world should be protected,” Pakdemirli added.

Turkey’s Agriculture and Forestry Minister Bekir Pakdemirli (left) and head of the UNCCD Ibrahim Thaw (right) at the international congress on "Successful Transformation toward Land Degradation Neutrality: Future Perspective" being held Jun. 17 to 19 in Ankara. Thaw told delegates at the conference that increasing food production by 50 percent, when land degradation and climate change will be decreasing crop yields by 50 percent, makes restoring and protecting the fragile layer of land an issue for “anyone who wants to eat, drink or breathe.” Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
ANKARA, Jun 17 2019 (IPS)

Events marking the 25th anniversary of the Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the World Day to Combat Desertification opened here Monday, Jun. 17 with a call for urgent action to protect and restore degrading land.

Two United Nations officials, the secretary-general as well as the UNCCD head, said it’s crucial that countries take action in order to reduce forced migration, improve food security, spur economic growth and help to address the global climate emergency.

“Think about what it takes to feed 7.5 billion people. Only 20 percent of the planet is habitable, yet within our own lifetimes one out of every four hectares of productive land has become unusable, three out of every four hectares have been altered from their natural state, and while agriculture drives that change, we waste a third of the food,” head of the UNCCD Ibrahim Thiaw told hundreds gathered in Ankara who were attending the international congress on “Successful Transformation toward Land Degradation Neutrality: Future Perspective” being held Jun. 17 to 19.

“We must take action to repay our debt to nature and restore our land, generating a tenfold return on our investment, multiplying the benefits of the Sustainable Development Goals, and growing together in a virtuous cycle where everyone contributes and everyone benefits.”

Thiaw said increasing food production by 50 percent, when land degradation and climate change will be decreasing crop yields by 50 percent, makes restoring and protecting the fragile layer of land an issue for “anyone who wants to eat, drink or breathe.”

World Day to Combat Desertification is celebrated every year in every country on Jun. 17 to promote good land stewardship for the benefit of present and future generations.

Thiaw highlighted that more than a billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty since the UNCCD was formed, but exploitation of natural resources continues to widen the poverty gap instead of reducing it.

And, while women are key to closing that gap, the UNCCD executive director said 90 percent of countries legally restrict their economic activity.

“For example, they make up 40 percent of farm workers, but only one in five own their land and even fewer control it,” Thiaw said.

“Yet, lifting such restrictions would add 240 million jobs and 28 trillion dollars to the economy by 2025. That’s like another U.S. economy – and then some – within just six years.”

Thiaw said this is why the UNCCD Gender Action Plan promotes more participation in decision making; more economic and legal empowerment; and more access to resources, education and technology.

“There is a social tipping point when women’s participation reaches 30 percent, and we need to reach it quickly, to avoid reaching one for land, biodiversity or climate.”

UN secretary-general António Guterres, in a video message at the opening of the congress, noted that the world loses 24 billion tons of fertile soil and dry land degradation reduces national domestic product in developing countries by up to eight percent annually.

Guterres said much remains to be done, and stressed the imperative of combatting desertification as part of our efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

Turkey’s Agriculture and Forestry Minister Bekir Pakdemirli presided over the global observance celebrations hosted by his country.

Pakdemirli said that in the last 30 years Turkey has increased its forestland by six percent.
Turkey is the world’s number three country when it comes to adding forestland, after China and India. Worldwide, forestland has shrunk over the last 10 years an average of 5.2 million hectares annually, Pakdemirli said.

With its afforestation, erosion control, and rehabilitation efforts over the last 10 years, Turkey is among the world’s leading countries in adding forestland, and these efforts will continue, he said.

As part of efforts to fight desertification and erosion, Turkey carried out 327 projects between 2011 and 2018.

Some 196 countries and the European Union are parties to the UNCCD, of which 169 are affected by desertification, land degradation or drought.

In 2015, the international community agreed to achieve a balance in the rate at which land is degraded and restored by taking concrete actions to avoid, reduce and reverse land degradation, generally referred to as achieving land degradation neutrality or LDN, and mitigate the effects of drought.

In the last four years, 122 countries have committed to take voluntary, measurable actions to arrest land degradation by 2030. And 44 of the 70 countries that have suffered drought in the past have set up national plans to manage drought more effectively in the future.

Whereas a significant amount of the land degradation and transformation has occurred over the last 50 years, Thiaw stressed that the success stories of land restoration and conservation, such as in Turkey’s Central Anatolia region, where rehabilitation and restoration over decades has resulted in increased forest cover, offer hope that change is possible when traditional knowledge, technology and faith communities come together creatively.

He said the restoration of 150 million hectares of farmland by 2030 can generate up to 40 billion dollars in extra income for smallholders, feed another 200 million people and sink several gigatons of carbon dioxide. Scaling it up across all our degraded land could prevent biodiversity and climate from disintegrating and bequeath new opportunities to the next generation, he added.

On all continents you have the issue of land degradation, and it requires governments, land users and all different communities in a country to be part of the solution. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah /IPS

By Desmond Brown
ANKARA, Jun 17 2019 (IPS)

The coming decades will be crucial in shaping and implementing a transformative land agenda, according to a scientist at the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) framework for Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN).

UNCCD-Science Policy Interface co-chair Dr. Mariam Akhtar-Schuster, who spoke with IPS ahead of the start of activities to mark World Day to Combat Desertification (WDCD) on Monday, Jun. 17, said this was one of the key messages emerging for policy- and other decision-makers.

This comes after the dire warnings in recent publications on desertification, land degradation and drought of the Global Land Outlook, Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Assessment Report on Land Degradation and Restoration, World Atlas of Desertification, and IPBES Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

“The main message is: things are not improving. The issue of desertification is becoming clearer to different communities, but we now have to start implementing the knowledge that we already have to combat desertification,” Akhtar-Schuster told IPS.

“It’s not only technology that we have to implement, it is the policy level that has to develop a governance structure which supports sustainable land management practices.”

IPBES Science and Policy for People and Nature found that the biosphere and atmosphere, upon which humanity as a whole depends, have been deeply reconfigured by people.

The report shows that 75 percent of the land area is very significantly altered, 66 percent of the ocean area is experiencing increasing cumulative impacts, and 85 percent of the wetland area has been lost.

“There are of course areas which are harder hit; these are areas which are experiencing extreme drought which makes it even more difficult to sustainably use land resources,” Akhtar-Schuster said.

“On all continents you have the issue of land degradation, so there’s no continent, there’s no country which can just lean back and say this is not our issue. Everybody has to do something.”

Akhtar-Schuster said there is sufficient knowledge out there which already can support evidence-based implementation of technology so that at least land degradation does not continue.

While the information is available, Akhtar-Schuster said it requires governments, land users and all different communities in a country to be part of the solution.

“There is no top-down approach. You need the people on the ground, you need the people who generate knowledge and you need the policy makers to implement that knowledge. You need everybody,” the UNCCD-SPI co-chair said.

“Nobody in a community, in a social environment, can say this has nothing to do with me. We are all consumers of products which are generated from land. So, we in our daily lives – the way we eat, the way we dress ourselves – whatever we do has something to do with land, and we can take decisions which are more friendly to land than what we’re doing at the moment.”

UNCCD-Science Policy Interface co-chair Dr. Mariam Akhtar-Schuster says things are not improving and that the issue of desertification is becoming clearer to different communities. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

UNCCD Lead Scientist Dr. Barron Joseph Orr said it’s important to note that while the four major assessments were all done for different reasons, using different methodologies, they are all converging on very similar messages.

He said while in the past land degradation was seen as a problem in a place where there is overgrazing or poor management practices on agricultural lands, the reality is, that’s not influencing the change in land.

“What’s very different from the past is the rate of land transformation. The pace of that change is considerable, both in terms of conversion to farm land and conversion to built-up areas,” Orr told IPS.

“We’ve got a situation where 75 percent of the land surface of the earth has been transformed, and the demand for food is only going to go up between now and 2050 with the population growth expected to increase one to two billion people.”

That’s a significant jump. Our demand for energy that’s drawn from land, bio energy, or the need for land for solar and wind energy is only going to increase but these studies are making it clear that we are not optimising our use,” Orr added.

Like Akhtar-Schuster, Orr said it’s now public knowledge what tools are necessary to sustainably manage agricultural land, and to restore or rehabilitate land that has been degraded.

“We need better incentives for our farmers and ranchers to do the right thing on the landscape, we have to have stronger safeguards for tenures so that future generations can continue that stewardship of the land,” he added.

The international community adopted the Convention to Combat Desertification in Paris on Jun. 17, 1994.

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Convention and the World Day to Combat Desertification in 2019 (#2019WDCD), UNCCD will look back and celebrate the 25 years of progress made by countries on sustainable land management.

At the same time, they will look at the broad picture of the next 25 years where they will achieve land degradation neutrality.

The anniversary campaign runs under the slogan “Let’s grow the future together,” with the global observance of WDCD and the 25th anniversary of the Convention on Jun. 17, hosted by the government of Turkey.

Women restore degraded land in southern India under a government-funded program. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
BONN, Germany, Nov 24 2017 (IPS)

Land restoration is not a “glamorous subject even when you give all the numbers,” admits Monique Barbut, the Executive Secretary of United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification UNCCD). But she also stresses that by 2050, the world population will reach 10 billion. To feed that extra 2.4 billion, current food production would need to be increased by 75 percent.

“To do that, we will have to add, from now to 2050, 4 million acres of new land every year. So unless urgent action is taken to restore degraded land, the world is looking at an acute food-insecure future,” she told IPS in a special interview on the sidelines of the recently concluded UN Climate Conference – COP23 in Bonn.

Land vs energy: a popularity game?

At the conference where ideas, actions, innovations and resources were brought in the open to design a roadmap to tackle climate change, the discussions were dominated by ending coal, producing renewable energy and making green technologies more accessible. Land was an issue largely ignored, except by some indigenous peoples’ groups who stressed the need to maintain soil fertility.

But Barbut asserts that land is indeed integral to climate actions and policies taken both at the UN and at the national level. “In the INDCs [Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, or what countries will do to cut carbon emissions] they have submitted, more than 140 countries have said that land was part of their solution or their problem in terms of climate change,” she points out.

One of the countries is India, where an estimated 30 percent of total land is already degraded. According to a 2016 report by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) titled “World Day to Combat Desertification”, the degrading area has increased over 0.5 per cent to 29.3 million hectares in the past decade. Desertification also increased by 1.16 million hectares (m ha) and stood at 82.64 m ha during 2011-13, says the report.

As a signatory to the UNCCD, India has committed to combat desertification and land degradation and become land degradation neutral by 2030. In simple terms, this means having a balanced proportion of land loss and land gain.

However, though an ambitious goal, this is seldom talked about by the officials. In sharp contrast, India’s other environmental actions, especially the Solar Mission which aims to produce 175 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2022, is widely lauded.

Anand Kumar, the secretary of India’s Ministry for New and Renewable Energy, is quick to point out that the International Solar Alliance – a group of 44 countries committed to produce 1,000 gigawatts of solar energy – has promised investments of 1 trillion dollars by 2030.

No land restoration initiatives are likely to garner that kind of private investment, admits Barbut, as the job is more labor intensive. “Even the most degraded land can be restored with a small investment of 300 dollars per hectare. So, what is needed is not a large sum of money, but lots of manual labour. So perhaps there is not a lot of scope for huge investment and large profits,” she says.

However, at the same time, she shared some good news: the UNCCD, in collaboration with Mirova, the governments of France, Luxembourg, Norway, and the Rockefeller Foundation, has launched a special fund for restoring degraded land and fighting desertification. Named the Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) Fund, this new finance vehicle was launched on September 12 this year, during the 13th Conference of the Parties (COP13) of the UNCCD in Ordos, China.

“We have launched the biggest land impact fund. It is managed by Natistix. It is a public-private fund. By the beginning of next year, we hope to have about 300 million dollars of capitalization of the fund,” Barbut says.

Monique Barbut, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Land and Women’s Rights

The connection between the environment and women’s rights is an integral one, says Barbut. “Whether it’s drought, land degradation or desertification, women suffer more than others. In fact, they not only suffer from the consequences of drought or desertification, but also from the fact that in most cases women do not have rights to land,” she says, before sharing some experiences from Africa where plots of degraded land were restored, but because women did not have rights to the land, they could not stake their claim.

One such example is in the Mboula region of Senegal, where the regional government allocated tracts of land to women’s groups for collective farming. The initiative has been a big success as the women’s collective managed to grow more food than expected. As a result, the women now have received training to venture into growing crops for market, besides their own consumption.

Similarly, in Eastern Uganda, the government started a new initiative with women who had no ownership over their land. They have been trained in marketing, managing a collective that cultivates arable land that was once degraded, but is now restored. Besides supporting these local initiatives at the country level, UNCCD is also mainstreaming gender equality in its own policies and actions.

“We now have a Gender Policy Framework and it’s the most advanced framework all the UN Conventions and which we will apply in particular to all the transformative projects,” Barbut explains.

Land and Climate Change

According to Barbut, climate change’s effects on land are becoming more and more of a global problem, with major social and political consequences. She mentions the recent droughts witnessed by France, Canada and successive droughts in the US, and also points out the recent exodus of people from drought and desertification in the global south.

“If you see all the migrants coming to Europe, 100 percent of them – not 90 percent but 100 percent – are coming from drylands. There are also migration and radicalism linked to land degradation and desertification. For example, in the drylands of Africa, where desertification is happening, we are seeing food riots and then we are seeing Al Qaeda,” she says, pointing to a study published by UNCCD that explores these links.

Citing another study by the British Government’s Defence Ministry, Barbut says that “by 2045, there will be 130 million people who migrated because of desertification, and out of them, 60 million will come from south of the Sahel and Africa.”

But all is not hopeless. Barbut shared her vision of a food-secure future and a clear way to achieve that goal: “By 2050, we will need millions of hectares of new lands to grow 75 percent extra food. Today we are taking new land from forests and wetlands. At the same time, on this planet, you have 2 billion hectares of degraded land. Among this, 500 million are abandoned agricultural land. If we restored 300 million of these 2 billion hectares of land, we can ensure food security for all by 2050.”

The impacts of fire and ecosystem fragmentation on a community can be devastating. Credit: Cheikh Mbow/ICRAF/Flickr

By Sam Otieno
NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 29 2017 (IPS)

Africa’s population continues to grow, putting intense pressure on available land for agricultural purposes and life-supporting ecosystem services even as the scenario is compounded by the adverse impacts of climate change.

But the adoption of land degradation neutrality (LDN) measures is helping ensure food and water security, and contributing to sustainable socioeconomic development and wellbeing, especially for Eastern African countries that face immense challenges.With over half of sub-Saharan Africa consisting of arid and semi-arid lands, the livelihoods of over 400 million people who inhabit these areas are at risk.

LDN will also help to achieve some of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Africa’s Vision 2063, launched in 2013 a strategic framework for the socioeconomic transformation of the continent over the next 50 years.

According to Economics of Land Degradation Initiative, a report by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and others, land degradation and desertification are among the world’s greatest environmental challenges. It is estimated that desertification affects approximately 33 per cent of the global land surface. Over the past 40 years, erosion has rendered close to one-third of the world’s arable land unproductive.

Africa is the most exposed, with desertification affecting around 45 per cent of the continent’s land area, out of which 55 per cent is at high or very high risk of further degradation. Dry lands are particularly affected by land degradation and with over 50 per cent of sub-Saharan Africa being arid and semi-arid lands, the livelihoods of over 400 million who inhabit these areas are at risk.

In an interview with IPS, Ermias Betemariam, a land health scientist at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) with research interest in land degradation, landscape ecology, restoration ecology, soil carbon dynamics and spatial science, said that increasing population is an important driver of the rising demand for natural resources and the ecosystem services they provide, including food and energy.

“Africa, in particular, faces the critical challenge of its population continuing to grow at a rapid rate while natural resources, arable, grazing, forest lands, and water resources become increasingly scarce and degraded,” he said.

Betemariam noted that food is mostly produced by small-scale farmers who may not have the resources, or be in an enabling economic and policy environment, to close the “yield gap” between current and potential yields.

Hence the increase in food needs of the rising population in Africa has been met by expanding agriculture into new lands which are often marginal, semi-arid zones that are climatically risky for agriculture – changing the local landscape, economy and society.

Such change in land use has been recorded as a major cause of land degradation in Africa.

Betemariam explained that achieving SDG 15.3 (a land degradation neutral world by 2030) is critical for Sub-Saharan African countries. LDN is about maintaining and improving the productivity of land resources by sustainably managing and restoring soil, water and biodiversity assets, while at the same time contributing to poverty reduction, food and water security, and climate change adaptation and mitigation.

UNCCD says that so far 110 countries have committed to set LDN targets. The Secretariat and the Global Mechanism of the UNCCD are supporting governments in this process, including the definition of national baselines, targets and associated measures to achieve LDN by 2030 through the LDN Target Setting Programme (TSP).

“LDN is a target that can be implemented at local, national and even regional scales,” Betemariam told IPS. “At the heart of LDN are Sustainable Land Management (SLM) practices that help close yield gaps and enhance the resilience of land resources and communities that directly depend on them while avoiding further degradation.”

For example, he cited the farmer-managed natural resources in Niger and livestock enclosure management and soil conservation at the Konso Cultural Landscape in Ethiopia which is registered by UNESCO.

Oliver Wasonga, a dryland ecology and pastoral livelihoods specialist at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, says there is little investment in sustainable land management, especially in the drylands, and yet many communities living in rural Africa increasingly lose their livelihoods due to loss of land productivity resulting from land degradation.

Wasonga told IPS that land degradation costs Africa about 65 billion dollars annually, around five per cent of its gross domestic product. Globally, the cost of land degradation is estimated at about 295 billion dollars annually.

Investment in restoration of degraded land is critical in enhancing household food and income security, he said, especially for the majority of Africa’s rural populace that relies almost entirely on natural resources for their livelihoods.

“This is more so for the millions of pastoralists and agro-pastoralists who inhabit the dry lands of Africa that form more than 40 per cent of the continent’s land surface. Any attempt to attain LDN is therefore key to achieving both poverty reduction and development goals,” said Wasonga.

He said there is a need to create a platform to showcase success stories that may motivate land users, decision makers, development agencies, and private investors to act better. And also to reward individuals, communities, and institutions for their outstanding efforts towards a LDN continent as an incentive to engage and invest in sustainable land management (SLM) practices.

Investment in SLM provides opportunities for not only enhancing the current productivity of land, but also offers solutions that go beyond technological approaches by including aspects of social participation and policy dialogue.

Levis Kavagi, Africa Coordinator, Ecosystems and Biodiversity at the United Nations Environment Programme, said SLM ensures that maximisation of benefits from land resources do not cause ecological damage, economic risks and social disparity. The approach combines maintaining and enhancing condition of land which is still in good health, as well as restoration of the already degraded land.

However, the success of any SLM programmes is dependent upon the governance system. A governance system that recognises and integrates customary institutions and practices is shown to yield better results than statutory interventions.

“African governments need to develop policies that promote SLM and specifically those aimed at restoration of degraded lands. There is need for ‘win-win’ approaches with multiple short- and long-term benefits in combating land degradation, as well as restoring or maintaining ecosystem functions and services, thereby contributing to sustainable livelihoods and rural development,” said Kavagi.

Involvement of land users and communities is key to success of any attempt to promote SLM and restoration of degraded lands, he stressed. Such approaches should seek integration of low-cost customary institutions and practices that are familiar to the communities as a way of decentralizing governance.

There is also a need to sensitize and motivate the private sector to invest in SLM. Payment for ecosystem services should be promoted as way of giving incentive to the communities to use land in a sustainable manner, he concluded.