This publication, ‘Island Innovations – UNDP and GEF: Leveraging the Environment for the Sustainable Development of SIDS’, demonstrates that far from succumbing to these challenges, SIDS have time and again risen to the task of managing their fragile environments to meet their sustainable development goals.

Land has many uses. It provides water, food and energy. It is used to create wealth and employment and grow economies. And it provides other, often less obvious and tangible, services such as conserving biodiversity, storing carbon, purifying and storing water. It even regulates the Earth’s climate, for instance, by absorbing the heat from the sun. All of its uses are undermined and destroyed when land is degraded. Degrading the land disrupts these functions and leads to severe food, water and energy shortages.

Land degradation refers to any reduction or loss in the biological or economic productive capacity of the land resource base. It is generally caused by human activities, exacerbated by natural processes, and often magnified by and closely intertwined with climate change and biodiversity loss. SLM practices include the integrated management of crops (trees), livestock, soil, water, nutrients, biodiversity, disease and pests to optimize the delivery of a range of ecosystem services. The overall objective is to maximize provisioning services (e.g.

Numbers can tell a compelling story. In this brochure, the numbers highlight how much we rely on productive land. Amongst other valuable services, land feeds our families, provides fresh water and powers our future ambitions. Much of the data collected here, however, demonstrate how close we are to pushing our relationship with the land to breaking point. The magnitude of the challenges and potential consequences of failing to implement bold action on land and soil, in terms of future social stability and economic development, should not be underestimated.

Land has a value for each and every one of us. Fertile soil provides us with plant life, vegetables, grains, and fibres. Forests supply us with timber and firewood. We benefit from fresh water, food, and many other ecosystem services that land provides us with. Land is also emotionally valuable to people as well, perhaps through associating treasured memories such as playing on it as a child. In any case, all societies and people assign historical and cultural value to their landscapes, their nature, and all natural phenomena associated with land. However, lands are in danger.

Land degradation remains a serious threat to livelihoods in Eastern Africa. The total population of sub-Saharan Africa is currently estimated at 750 million people, but it is projected to exceed the one billion mark by 2020. The demand for food is putting increasing pressure on the natural resource base. The current debate on the land degradation situation in Eastern Africa is short of consensus because of misunderstanding misinterpretation and discrepancies in the available information.

A medida que la comunidad mundial intenta abordar el tema del cambio climático a través de medidas de adaptación y mitigación en el paisaje en países en desarrollo, se realza cada vez más la importancia que reviste la tenencia de recursos.

Uno de los temas de negociación en la Convención Marco de Naciones Unidas sobre Cambio Climático (CMNUCC) que ha atraído una atención preferente de los países de América Latina es el que dice relación con la instalación de un mecanismo, dentro de este convenio internacional, que pudiera movilizar recursos financieros para hacer frente a los procesos de deforestación y degradación que ocurren en los bosques del mundo, particularmente en las naciones en desarrollo, incluyendo actividades de conservación y/o el aumento del stock de carbono de la masa forestal.

MENA’s permanent cropland – currently at less than 6% of the total land area – is shrinking due to serious land degradation and recurrent droughts. The region faces the most severe water shortage in the world with annual renewable water resources per capita estimated to decline from 1,045 m3/yr in 1997 to 740 m3/yr in 2015.

This document is a synthesis of outcomes from a knowledge process that was a collaborative effort involving researchers, scientists, and technicians from Iran, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, and Yemen.

En Aisén, Chile, se compararon distintos estadios de degradación antropogénica de la vegetación arbustiva original en una serie de distintos manejos de pastoreo, utilizando los indicadores ecológicos vegetales de Ellenberg para los factores de luz, temperatura del aire y de reacción, nitrógeno y humedad del suelo. El matorral de ñirre primario se consideró como inicio de la serie. Se trabajó con tablas de vegetación separadas para cada estado de degradación.

Land degradation occurs in all continents and affects the livelihoods of millions of people, including a large proportion of
the poor in the drylands. Opuntiaficus-indica (L.) Mill. is a xerophytic cactus species, widely cultivated in arid and semi-arid regions
worldwide. As most of species of the Cactacee family, 0. fiCUS-indica exhibits Crassulacean Acid Metabolism (CAM), with
nocturnal stomata opening and C02 uptake occurring, typically, from dusk to dawn. Many reasons may account for the great interest