This blog post is part of the series What to Read.
According to a widely circulated estimate, up to 40% of all lands on Earth would be degraded. There are scientific debates on the extent, pace, and severity of degradation worldwide due to variations in definitions, methods, and baselines. It is now accepted that desertification, a form of land degradation affecting drylands, is not progressing evenly or linearly on a global scale, but rather is a locally situated phenomenon.
Nevertheless, when land degradation does occur, it has undeniable consequences for affected people. Depending on local conditions, land degradation takes many forms: forests that once provided drinking water, food, and fodder may decline or disappear; soils may become too poor or saline to support farming; or sand particles can saturate the air, making breathing unpleasant—as I have myself experienced during the dry season in Northern Senegal. Land degradation intersects with climate change and other environmental stressors to make human life difficult, and sometimes even impossible, causing food insecurity, economic struggles, and forced migration.
To address this problem, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) established land degradation neutrality (LDN) as a global target and has since adopted it as a guiding scientific and policy framework. This framework outlines several actions to undertake: 1) avoid new degradation through the conservation of intact areas; 2) reduce land degradation through sustainable land management practices; 3) reverse past degradation through reforestation, rewilding, and restoration.
In practice, many nature-based solutions simultaneously aim to achieve land restoration, biodiversity conservation, and climate mitigation. A flagship example is the Great Green Wall, which seeks to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land across Africa’s entire width while also sequestering 250 million tonnes of carbon by 2030. Other initiatives also address land degradation, such as the Bonn Challenge, launched by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the German government in 2011. For more information on the fundamentals of LDN, you can consult this Issue Page.
These ambitious environmental interventions have implications for people who use the land targeted for restoration. LDN initiatives not only influence land tenure but are shaped by it. Secure land rights can facilitate investment in restoration, while poorly designed interventions risk undermining existing land claims. Understanding this two-way dynamic is key to ensuring LDN efforts are both effective and equitable.
The impacts of LDN initiatives on tenure: In some cases, land restoration efforts have inadvertently led to land dispossession, tenure insecurity, or displacement—particularly where land rights are unregistered or exercised communally, making it more difficult to protect them through existing legal and institutional frameworks. As LDN projects are rolled out, they can increase competition for land in contexts where it is already under pressure for traditional livelihoods (such as farming) and new environmental uses (such as carbon offsets or conservation initiatives).
Cognizant of these risks, the UNCCD has recently adopted three land tenure decisions (26/COP.14, 27/COP.15, and 28/COP.16) to mainstream tenure considerations into national Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) planning. These decisions establish secure tenure both as a precondition for and a desired outcome of LDN interventions.
The impacts of tenure on LDN initiatives
Secure access to land is widely viewed as a key enabler of successful LDN interventions. When land users have long-term tenure security and can benefit from their investments in the land, they are more likely to adopt practices that prevent degradation, improve soil health, and restore ecosystem functions, all of which contribute to achieving LDN targets.
However, tenure security alone is insufficient to avoid land degradation and deforestation. Even where land rights are secure, land degradation may persist in the absence of supportive policies, technical assistance, and economic incentives—particularly in contexts of poverty or weak rule of law. Tenure security does not depend solely on whether land is titled or privately owned. Different tenure regimes—whether public, private, or communal—shape land-use decisions in distinct ways, and their effectiveness varies by region and governance context. Still, when paired with the right restoration frameworks and governance arrangements, secure tenure on all types of land can significantly boost LDN outcomes.
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This week, as the Land Portal and TMG Research are co-organizing a webinar on LDN, I took an interest in this topic and scoured the Internet to find relevant open-access papers and reports exploring the “tenure-restoration nexus.”
Although land degradation has been a concern for decades, publications focusing specifically on LDN (or its former designation, “zero-net degradation”) are relatively few, perhaps due to the concept’s recent creation and adoption. Studies on LDN and related terms (restoration, desertification, etc.) have increased in recent years, but remain scarce, notably in terms of assessing their socio-economic impacts. Yet, besides all the other hyperlinked resources in this introductory part, I leave you with three fascinating publications that illustrate the complex interplays between land tenure and land degradation, based on real cases in various African countries.
Securing Land Tenure Rights to Achieve Land Degradation Neutrality
By TMG Research, 2024
This report appraises the implementation of the UNCCD Land Tenure Decision in Benin, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, and Uganda based on a multi-year process that involved action-oriented research. A major gap is that LDN frameworks in these countries hardly mention legitimate tenure rights and have not established mechanisms to document or systematically recognise them. This omission risks jeopardizing customary and communal land rights in areas where LDN projects are implemented, particularly when government authorities prioritize legally recognized land rights.
A finding that struck me is that when forest authorities are less actively involved and customary institutions play a greater role in forest management, as in Kenya, tenure-related conflicts rarely occur. Conversely, in contexts like Benin, where the state is more present and involved in conservation surveillance, with little delegated decision-making power to communities, there is often greater perceived tenure insecurity and more frequent conflicts between foresters and local communities. Respondents from the Three Rivers gazetted forest in Benin even reported having disputes with foresters at much higher rates than between farmers and pastoralists – as illustrated in this data story– although the latter type of conflict is often viewed as pervasive in the Sahel.
Next to the lack of efforts to map legitimate tenure rights, TMG researchers found that the lack of grievance mechanisms has posed an additional challenge to implementing LDN measures. As a result, strengthening access to justice is essential, because unresolved tenure disputes continue to hinder progress.
Other studies confirm TMG’s findings on the omission of tenure rights in LDN frameworks and initiatives. A review of Global Environment Facility projects addressing LDN found that only 52% of project documents mentioned “tenure,” while only 21% mentioned “land rights.” Another study similarly concludes that Restoration Opportunities Assessment Methodology (ROAM) reports under examination did not substantively assess land tenure and governance.
Environmental rehabilitation and the vulnerability of the poor: The case of the Great Green Wall
By Matthew D. Turner, Tanya Carney, Laura Lawler, Julia Reynolds, Lauren Kelly, Molly S. Teague, and Leif Brottem, 2021
The paper examines projects that fall under the umbrella of the Great Green Wall (GGW), funded by the World Bank from 2006 to 2020. To assess whether the GGW achieves its stated aim of reducing social vulnerability while rehabilitating degraded landscapes, the researchers have combined an analysis of project documents in twelve countries and rapid rural appraisals in Niger. It empirically illustrates what can happen when LDN initiatives fail to adequately account for customary land tenure.
They conclude that project materials and reports only superficially assess ways to target the most vulnerable and avoid exacerbating their vulnerability, notably in terms of adverse outcomes resulting from restricted access to resources. In particular, little attention was given to understanding how people used degraded lands despite their low productivity and how restoration could disrupt existing livelihoods.
The research illustrates that LDN interventions, when successful from an environmental perspective, can also alter prevailing patterns of resource access or reinforce social inequalities in unexpected ways—even if they do not entail outright dispossession or physical exclusion.
The authors provide examples of these subtle processes, showing that a change in vegetation cover due to restoration may represent an indirect form of enclosure, whereby pastoralists can no longer access herbaceous vegetation to graze their cattle. In other cases, there were signs that restored land, previously held in common and used as pastures, was transformed into farmland. Another example is the privatization and sale of common land by village elites after its rehabilitation.
The authors offer a nuanced assessment, although fully understanding and substantiating such complex issues would, in my view, require longer fieldwork, not solely short-term visits. For those interested, I recommend two complementary readings. This Master’s thesis illustrates how the GGW negatively affects pastoral systems. Adopting a broader scope, this study analyses the pathways through which nature-based solutions influence people’s vulnerabilities in the Global South.
Resolving land tenure security is essential to deliver forest restoration
O. Sarobidy Rakotonarivo, Mirindra Rakotoarisoa, H. Manoa Rajaonarivelo, Stefana Raharijaona, Julia P. G. Jones & Neal Hockley, 2024
This paper adopts a different perspective, showing how unresolved tenure issues impede forest restoration efforts in Madagascar. Although I wish the authors had explicitly addressed the conceptual distinctions outlined above (customary land rights do not necessarily equate with insecure tenure), I find their analysis insightful.
They illustrate that effective reforestation cannot succeed without acknowledging and considering people’s claims on the land, especially given that globally, restoration priority areas significantly overlap with countries where governance is weak and where indigenous and community lands are not recognized. This has serious implications: restoration projects in these countries carry a real risk of disenfranchising people.
In Madagascar, planned large-scale restoration projects had to downsize or walk back entirely because targeted state-controlled land—viewed as barren or degraded—was used and valued by local populations, albeit informally. When projects continued despite fears of displacement, cases of arson and destruction of seedlings were reported.
Additionally, the authors show that tenure forms influence benefit expectations. A mismatch between restoration priorities (reforesting common lands with native species) and people’s preferences (planting fast-growing, marketable trees on their private parcels) can hinder forest restoration. Conversely, formalising individual rights to trees and lands can incentivise restoration.
By way of conclusion, the paper provides a helpful literature review to contextualise Madagascar’s experience. If you wish to learn more about how tenure shapes restoration, I recommend reading section 3 of this toolbox. The authors delineate various scenarios and their implications for forest landscape restoration.
This digest was produced as a companion to the webinar "The Land We Need: Rights, Restoration, and Collective Action Towards UNCCD COP17". Register for the webinar here.
About 'What to Read'
What to Read is a periodic blog in which Land Portal researchers share their reading list and tell you why the selected pieces stand out in a sea of information. It is a reflection on some of the most important new articles and reports that aims to identify the most current points of discussion around land and related issues, distill key messages and points of debate, and offer you an entry point to learn more. Sign up to receive the What to Read digest.