Land the size of Central Asia lost since 2015 due to degradation

Subject: Environment

Section: International Convention

Context:

Healthy and productive land the size of Central Asia has been degraded since 2015, affecting food and water security globally and directly impacting the lives of 1.3 billion people, according to latest estimates released by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification’s (UNCCD).

Findings of the report:

At least 100 million hectares of healthy and productive land were degraded every year between 2015 and 2019.
This is about the combined area of five Central Asian nations: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

UN’s efforts to reduce land-degradation:

The UN has set a target to achieve a land-degradation-neutral world by 2030.
The UNCCD 2018−2030 Strategic Framework was adopted by CoP13 of UNCCD in 2017, which encouraged Parties to apply it in their national policies, programmes, plans and processes relating to desertification / land degradation and drought.
The framework contains five strategic objectives that are meant to guide the actions of all UNCCD stakeholders and partners in the period 2018-2030:
- To improve the condition of affected ecosystems, combat desertification/land degradation, promote sustainable land management and contribute to land degradation neutrality
- To improve the living conditions of affected populations
- To mitigate, adapt to and manage the effects of drought in order to enhance resilience of vulnerable populations and ecosystems
- To generate global environmental benefits through effective implementation of the UNCCD
- To mobilise substantial and additional financial and nonfinancial resources to support the implementation of the Convention by building effective partnerships at global and national level

Review of the actions taken by the stakeholders:

The Parties will review the assessment of implementation of the framework along the Strategic Objectives at the 21st session of the Committee for the Review of the Implementation of the Convention (CRIC 21), to be held in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
CRIC 21, one of UNCCD’s official meetings, will review progress in implementing strategic objectives on the following:
- Promoting sustainable land management
- Building drought resilience
- Supporting women’s leadership in sustainable agriculture
- Addressing forced migration due to land degradation and climate change.

Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN):

UNCCD defines LDN as “a state whereby the amount and quality of land resources necessary to support ecosystem functions and services to enhance food security remain stable, or increase, within specified temporal and spatial scales and ecosystems.”
The impacts of land degradation will be felt by most of the world’s population. Land degradation also changes and disrupts rainfall patterns, exacerbates extreme weather like droughts or floods, and drives further climate change. It results in social and political instability, which drives poverty, conflict, and migration.
Achieving LDN requires three concurrent actions: 
- firstly, avoiding new degradation of land by maintaining existing healthy land;
- secondly, reducing existing degradation by adopting sustainable land management practices that can slow degradation while increasing biodiversity, soil health, and food production; and
- thirdly, ramping up efforts to restore and return degraded lands to a natural or more productive state.

The UNCCD’s objectives for LDN include: