Blog: A global outlook on land health
By Jonathan Davies. Healthy soils, rich in biodiversity, are the foundation of life on earth. They sustain all other life on land, support food production, regulate water supplies, and capture atmospheric carbon that would otherwisecontributeto climate change. As we have been reminded by the latestGlobal Land Outlook launched by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, as much as forty percent of all land on earth may be degraded, further compromising thevital services to society.
Whilst agriculture is the leading driver of land degradation and the greatest threat to biodiversity, the sectordepends on healthy land and biodiversity for its own future. Farmers and businesses are increasingly aware of the importance of restoring land health and managing biodiversity sustainablyin order to maintain the resilience and productivity of food systems. This knowledge is driving a behavioral shift of many stakeholders, away from mining soil as a non-renewable resource and more towards maintaining soil health through agro-ecological and regenerative farming practices.
ϲʿֱֳ’s 2020 report ‘’ debunks the myth that nature conservation and global food production are a zero-sum game. The report shows that conserving living, biodiverse soils and landscapes can boost yields while helping both nature and society. Thereport clearly identifies common ground and joint aims for farmers and conservationists that can help secure the future of agriculture itself. ϲʿֱֳ is implementing the ‘Common Ground Dialogues’ between agriculture and conservation actors in the public, private and non-government sectors in order to focus attention on areas of consensus where action for sustainable agriculture can be accelerated.
ϲʿֱֳ promotes sustainable agriculture in line with the ‘’ published by Locke et al. (2019). This framework differentiates between intensively (roughly 30%) and extensively (70%) farmed land. ϲʿֱֳ supports the draft CBD Target 10 (ensuring that all areas under agriculture are managed sustainably), which can be achieved by ensuring that all agricultural land is managed to conserve and restore land health, in line with the indicators of Land Degradation Neutrality as established by UNCCD[1]. This will require differentiated solutions for land according to the intensity of its management and will necessitate significant scale up of recognised regenerative and agro-ecological approaches.
Sustainably managed agricultural lands can also make a major contribution to the proposed CBD target of conserving 30% of the planet’s land area by 2030. Farmers and other food system actors are central partners in this endeavour and they should be rewarded for their contributions to achieving targets for conserving biodiversity and sustainably managing land.
The upcoming UNCCD in Abidjan (9 to 20 May 2022) provides a further opportunity to strengthen global action for sustainable land management. It is an opportunity to push for significant increase in the area of land under agroecological and regenerative approaches and other recognised nature-positive approaches. ϲʿֱֳ will demonstrate the role of Nature-based Solutionsin achieving Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) and will promote commitment and action for rangeland restoration.
Our contribution to the negotiations builds on our work with Indigenous People Organisations, women’s organizations, the private sector and Civil Society Organisationsto deliver LDN targets. ϲʿֱֳ’s engagement in the is coordinated with our influence of other international agreements, particularly to promote synergy between the Rio Conventions. The ϲʿֱֳ position paper at the UNCCD CoP is available from this webpage.
Blog written by Jonathan Davies, ϲʿֱֳ Senior Agriculture Advisor
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[1] These indicators are land cover (physical land cover class), land productivity (net primary productivity) and carbon stocks (soil organic carbon stocks)