36
SDG 10: Reducing inequity among countries
SDG 13: Combating climate change.
Considering that the relationship between sustainable land management, climate
change, water, food security, and other goals is a comprehensive effort to simultaneously meet different goals and targets, it remains to be seen what could be the degree
of linkages between drylands and other SDGs’ targets in order to promote a coherent development policy for drylands.
SDGs and Drylands: An Overview
Drylands constitute a significant resource, both cross-cutting and critical for achieving the 2030 Agenda. The interlinkage between dryland development and the SDGs
is the already mentioned target 15.3 which states that: “By 2030, combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification,
drought and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation neutral world” (Tóth
et al. 2018). As widely acknowledged, SDG target 15.3 sets out a new global ambition never posed before: to achieve land degradation neutrality (LDN) by the year
2030. The goal is maintaining or enhancing the conservation of natural capital
stocks associated with land resources and ecosystem services. It is worth reminding
that the concept of “zero net land degradation” was proposed at the 2012 UN
Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20). This was reformulated as “strive
to achieve a land degradation neutral world” in the final outcome document entitled,
The Future We Want, and subsequently adopted by the UN General Assembly as
part of the sustainable development goals (SDGs). At the basis of the LDN concept
is the difference between two alternative phases of land degradation. One is the
ongoing process of degradation through an intense land use that reduces productivity within certain time, and the second one is at a state that can be already abandoned degraded land with a recovery potential (Safriel 2017).
If we take into account that the land degradation process induces a persistent
decline in productivity among other factors, it is crucial to promote and scale up a
sustained land management and monitoring system to reduce degradation and
increase restoration. In the case of drylands, it is therefore necessary to set a frame
with realistic milestones for LDN and SDGs in order to measure the improved conditions for a better land management within different local contexts (Bouma 2019).
When wanting to adapt the sustainable development goals to drylands, this should be
done by considering the dryland syndrome (Reynolds et al. 2007; Stafford Smith
et al. 2009). These are causally linked climatic, edaphic, demographic, geographic
drivers that ultimately lead to a state of marginalization of dryland dwellers. Highly
variable, unpredictable climate and scarcity of soil resources permit only low
vegetation cover and patchy distribution of natural resources, which in turn inhibits
otherwise rapid human population growth and leads to a mobile lifestyle (e.g., pastoralism) in remote areas. The remoteness also considers markets, centers of political
S. Lucatello and E. Huber-Sannwald
SDG 10: Reducing inequity among countries
SDG 13: Combating climate change.
Considering that the relationship between sustainable land management, climate
change, water, food security, and other goals is a comprehensive effort to simultaneously meet different goals and targets, it remains to be seen what could be the degree
of linkages between drylands and other SDGs’ targets in order to promote a coherent development policy for drylands.
SDGs and Drylands: An Overview
Drylands constitute a significant resource, both cross-cutting and critical for achieving the 2030 Agenda. The interlinkage between dryland development and the SDGs
is the already mentioned target 15.3 which states that: “By 2030, combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification,
drought and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation neutral world” (Tóth
et al. 2018). As widely acknowledged, SDG target 15.3 sets out a new global ambition never posed before: to achieve land degradation neutrality (LDN) by the year
2030. The goal is maintaining or enhancing the conservation of natural capital
stocks associated with land resources and ecosystem services. It is worth reminding
that the concept of “zero net land degradation” was proposed at the 2012 UN
Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20). This was reformulated as “strive
to achieve a land degradation neutral world” in the final outcome document entitled,
The Future We Want, and subsequently adopted by the UN General Assembly as
part of the sustainable development goals (SDGs). At the basis of the LDN concept
is the difference between two alternative phases of land degradation. One is the
ongoing process of degradation through an intense land use that reduces productivity within certain time, and the second one is at a state that can be already abandoned degraded land with a recovery potential (Safriel 2017).
If we take into account that the land degradation process induces a persistent
decline in productivity among other factors, it is crucial to promote and scale up a
sustained land management and monitoring system to reduce degradation and
increase restoration. In the case of drylands, it is therefore necessary to set a frame
with realistic milestones for LDN and SDGs in order to measure the improved conditions for a better land management within different local contexts (Bouma 2019).
When wanting to adapt the sustainable development goals to drylands, this should be
done by considering the dryland syndrome (Reynolds et al. 2007; Stafford Smith
et al. 2009). These are causally linked climatic, edaphic, demographic, geographic
drivers that ultimately lead to a state of marginalization of dryland dwellers. Highly
variable, unpredictable climate and scarcity of soil resources permit only low
vegetation cover and patchy distribution of natural resources, which in turn inhibits
otherwise rapid human population growth and leads to a mobile lifestyle (e.g., pastoralism) in remote areas. The remoteness also considers markets, centers of political
S. Lucatello and E. Huber-Sannwald