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The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015 include a target on land degradation neutrality (LDN) (SDG 15.3). Attaining and maintaining LDN requires addressing a land governance challenge to steer land management towards avoiding, reducing and reversing land degradation. Uptake of LDN can be catalysed by creating an enabling environment for LDN and by designing and implementing measures that achieve multiple benefits through safeguarding and enhancing well-being and livelihoods of people affected by land degradation while improving a range of environmental conditions. This report provides science-based evidence on the configuration of the enabling environment for LDN and the opportunities for multiple benefits. Three approaches are used to delineate the evidence base. First, a literature review summarizes contemporary trends in land governance and land markets, and assesses the implications for LDN. Second, a survey among practitioners and experts involved in the LDN process gauges their perceptions and expectations about the enabling environment, multiple benefits and general progress of LDN. Third, a review of LDN Target Setting Programme (TSP) country reports contextualizes the results from the survey. Insights from these sources are triangulated to formulate key messages and policy options. These highlight the multidimensional nature of the LDN enabling environment, which requires enhanced vertical and horizontal integration of institutions and governance mechanisms. Further, land governance and secure land tenure need to be adapted to local conditions. Evidence highlights the dynamics of land governance and the increasing impacts of global value chains on local land management, providing both challenges and opportunities for LDN implementation. LDN stakeholders have high expectations for multiple well-being and livelihood benefits to be attained through LDN implementation. Evidence indicates that the level of achieved multiple benefits strongly depends on contextual conditions. Therefore, making assessments of the prevailing political, social, economic and cultural dimensions that characterize a target area or country is needed to better align LDN with other national targets.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015 include a target on land degradation neutrality (LDN) (SDG 15.3). Attaining and maintaining LDN requires addressing a land governance challenge to steer land management towards avoiding, reducing and reversing land degradation. Uptake of LDN can be catalysed by creating an enabling environment for LDN and by designing and implementing measures that achieve multiple benefits through safeguarding and enhancing well-being and livelihoods of people affected by land degradation while improving a range of environmental conditions. This report provides science-based evidence on the configuration of the enabling environment for LDN and the opportunities for multiple benefits. Three approaches are used to delineate the evidence base. First, a literature review summarizes contemporary trends in land governance and land markets, and assesses the implications for LDN. Second, a survey among practitioners and experts involved in the LDN process gauges their perceptions and expectations about the enabling environment, multiple benefits and general progress of LDN. Third, a review of LDN Target Setting Programme (TSP) country reports contextualizes the results from the survey. Insights from these sources are triangulated to formulate key messages and policy options. These highlight the multidimensional nature of the LDN enabling environment, which requires enhanced vertical and horizontal integration of institutions and governance mechanisms. Further, land governance and secure land tenure need to be adapted to local conditions. Evidence highlights the dynamics of land governance and the increasingimpacts of global value chains on local land management, providing both challenges and opportunities for LDN implementation. LDN stakeholders have high expectations for multiple well-being and livelihood benefits to be attained through LDN implementation. Evidence indicates that the level of achieved multiple benefits strongly depends on contextual conditions. Therefore, making assessments of the prevailing political, social, economic and cultural dimensions that characterize a target area or country is needed to better align LDN with other national targets.

Sustainable Land Management (SLM) represents a holistic approach to achieving long-term productive ecosystems by integrating biophysical, socio-cultural and economic needs and values. SLM is one of the main mechanisms to achieve Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN).To foster and facilitate the adoption of SLM practices that address DLDD while mitigating climate change and enhancing climate change adaptation, this report assesses the synergistic potential of SLM practices while also critically evaluating the possible trade-offs between the different objectives. The assessment provides a scientifically-sound basis to understand SLM's potential to contribute to multiple objectives, and provides practical guidance for creating an enabling environment for selection and large-scale implementation of effective, locallyadapted SLM practices. Overall objective : The objective of the present report is to "highlight the science-based synergistic potential of SLM practices to address DLDD, climate change mitigation and adaptation" as a contribution to the UNCCD's Science Policy Interface (SPI) work programme 2016-2017. By doing so, the linkages between SLM practices to address DLDD, climate change adaptation and mitigation, and resulting synergies and trade-offs, are considered.

It is increasingly recognised that land degradation monitoring and assessment can benefit from incorporating multiple sources of knowledge, using a variety of methods at different scales, including the perspectives of researchers, land managers and other stakeholders. However, the knowledge and methods required to achieve this are often dispersed across individuals and organisations at different levels and locations. Appropriate knowledge management mechanisms are therefore required to more efficiently harness these different sources of knowledge and facilitate their broader dissemination and application. This paper examines what knowledge is, how it is generated and explores how it may be stored, transferred and exchanged between knowledge producers and users before it is applied to monitor and assess land degradation at the local scale. It suggests that knowledge management can also benefit from the development of mechanisms that promote changes in understanding and efficient means of accessing and/or brokering knowledge. Broadly, these processes for knowledge management can (i) help identify and share good practices and build capacity for land degradation monitoring at different scales and in different contexts and (ii) create knowledge networks to share lessons learned and monitoring data among and between different stakeholders, scales and locations. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) remains the only 'Rio Convention' that is not well served by the scientific community and lacks the equivalent of an IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) or the proposed IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services). The mounting pressures on land (and water) that can drive its degradation include population growth and associated food security concerns, over use, creeping degradation, competition between agriculture and renewable energy production, carbon sequestration and land acquisition by foreign entities. These environmental and human pressures clearly require urgent policy attention. We report the results of a survey of the scientific community on the need and possible options for a science-policy platform that focuses on land. The paper then describes the remit and role of an independent platform, the benefits and possible modalities that are inclusive and build on existing institutional structures. Both short-term and longer term options are presented that can respond to immediate needs while establishing a mechanism that can handle the interacting and sometimes overlapping aspects of land covered by other Multilateral Environment Agreements (MEAs). Short-term options include establishing a platform via an ad hoc working group within the proposed IPBES that would feed its outputs into the UNCCD and other relevant MEAs. Long-term options include a more polycentric approach, establishing a network of networks that could evolve into a fully-fledged Independent Platform on Land Degradation given sufficient support, interest and leadership from the international and donor communities.

For land degradation monitoring and assessment (M&A) to be accurate and for sustainable land management (SLM) to be effective, it is necessary to incorporate multiple knowledges using a variety of methods and scales, and this must include the (potentially conflicting) perspectives of those who use the land. This paper presents a hybrid methodological framework that builds on approaches developed by UN Food & Agriculture Organisation's land degradation Assessment in Drylands (LADA), the World Conservation Approaches and Technologies (WOCAT) programme and the Dryland Development Paradigm (DDP), and is being applied internationally through the EU-funded DESIRE project. The framework suggests that M&A should determine the progress of SLM towards meeting sustainability goals, with results continually and iteratively enhancing SLM decisions. The framework is divided into four generic themes: (i) establishing land degradation and SLM context and sustainability goals; (ii) identifying, evaluating and selecting SLM strategies; (iii) selecting land degradation and SLM indicators and (iv) applying SLM options and monitoring land degradation and progress towards sustainability goals. This approach incorporates multiple knowledge sources and types (including land manager perspectives) from local to national and international scales. In doing so, it aims to provide outputs for policy-makers and land managers that have the potential to enhance the sustainability of land management in drylands, from the field scale to the region, and to national and international levels. The paper draws on operational experience from across the DESIRE project to break the four themes into a series of methodological steps, and provides examples of the range of tools and methods that can be used to operationalise each of these steps. Refereed/Peer-reviewed