In last few decades, land degradation became an alarming issue for Bangladesh with impacts on land and water resources, productivity and food security as well as biodiversity and greenhouse gas emissions. To address the national and local land degradation issue, the FAO project GCP/GLO/337/GFF “Decision support for mainstreaming and scaling up of sustainable land management (DS-SLM)” is focusing on better information and understanding of land degradation and the generation of decision support tools to promote sustainable land management. One major objective of this project is to document national sustainable land management practices. The documentation of sustainable land management in Bangladesh is performed using the WOCAT tools. The World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies (WOCAT) is a global Network and contributes to compile, document, evaluate, share, disseminate, and apply sustainable land management (SLM) knowledge around the world.  These tools and guidelines support planning and decision-making by allowing SLM specialists to identify fields of action, find appropriate SLM technologies and approaches, and share their valuable knowledge in land management.
From November 24 to 26 2018, 18 participants from six organizations met in Barisal for a training on documentation of SLM technologies and approaches using WOCAT tools. Through this training the collaboration between Department of Environment (DoE), Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE), Soil Resource Development Institute (SRDI), Barind Multipurpose Development Authority (BMDA), Forest Department (FD) and FAO was strengthened as well as the capacities to prepare technical specifications and document SLM. The training consisted in courses on land degradation, landscape restoration and sustainable land management as well as field exercises for documenting SLM.
Mr. Jalal Uddin Md. Shoaib, who was the key resource person during this training, highlighted the importance of collecting the lessons learnt from the field to scale-up the success stories and better manage land in Bangladesh.
“With FAO technical support, this effort to document SLM is nationally very important to combat land degradation and to manage the land sustainably” said Dr. Sohrab Ali, Director, Dhaka Metropolitan, Department of Environment and the National Project Coordinator (NPC) of DS-SLM project.
 “This training on WOCAT tools helps better understanding to develop a common platform to explore dimensions of SLM practices and expand sustainable land management in the country” said Md. Fazlay Arafat, Sustainable Land Management expert.
Without effective knowledge management and decision support tools and processes, land resource management will remain ineffective. This sort of technical training plays crucial role to identify and scale up best SLM practices.