With regenerative grazing management, that is, the right management of livestock and wildlife for the right context, land degradation can be reversed, leading not only to a rapid regain of ecoystem function but to greater revenue for the women, men and youth drawing their livelihoods from these landscapes. This paper explores agroforestry, regenerative grazing management and silvopastoral systems and was produced in collaboration with CIFOR, World Agroforestry, Regreening Africa, Soil 4 Climate, Savory, Grassroots Trust, ILRI, Global EverGreening Alliance, green up to cool down, ICARDA, Alliance Biodiversity & CIAT, CGIAR and SHARED ahead of the COP 27 2022.

This white paper provides useful background for the GLF Climate Digital Conference: A turning point for drought management: Upscaling the silvopastoral approach in the Near East North Africa (NENA) region. This session will explore the question: What needs to be done and - who needs to do it - to implement integrated drought management through silvopastoral systems to ensure countries in the NENA region are better prepared for drought? Using examples from the NENA region, speakers and panellists will highlight the benefits of drought management through silvopastoral systems, present evidence of how they have been used effectively, and discuss how to upscale these practices further.

This policy brief is intended to inform decision-makers of nine transformational actions to sustain dryland production systems under the impact of climate change. It highlights the relevance of the local context for interventions and the importance of traditional and tested adaptive agrosilvopastoral strategies for building resilience. In addition, it emphasizes the potential for scaling up and using complementary technologies over wider areas. In particular, the roles of both women and men should not be neglected in terms of maintaining, creating and restoring dryland sustainable landscape.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in partnership with Turkey’s Ministry of Forestry and Water Affairs, is working to support Eritrea, Mauritania and Sudan as they fight land degradation and desertification through sustainable management of their natural resources and by restoring degraded forests and landscapes. Through the FAO-Turkey Forestry Partnership programme, FAO is developing and implementing Boosting Restoration, Income, Development, Generating Ecosystem Services (BRIDGES), a project that contributes to Africa’s Great Green Wall initiative and will work in synergy with the Action Against Desertification project.

The Dryland Restoration Initiative Platform (DRIP) is an interactive web portal with an online tool to support practitioners, project managers, policy-makers and decision-makers in compiling and analysing data and capturing and sharing lessons learned from restoration initiatives, thus advancing the monitoring and assessment of these initiatives globally. DRIP was developed and tested with the active participation of dryland restoration experts and practitioners worldwide.

This publication presents efforts by FAO and partners on mapping the intervention area of the Great Green Wall initiative and restoration opportunities based on data gathered through Collect Earth and in support of presenting FAO's effort at COP22 in Marrakech on 14 November 2016.

Drylands cover about 41 percent of the Earth’s land surface and are home to 2 billion people, the majority of whom depend on forests and other wooded lands, grasslands and trees on farms for income and to meet basic needs. Yet surprising little is known about such ecosystems in drylands, despite widespread recognition of the need to restore drylands to cope with the effects of drought, desertification, land degradation and climate change. This document presents preliminary results of the first global assessment of trees, forests and land use in drylands. It reports, among other things, that the global drylands contain 1.11 billion hectares of forest, which is more than one-quarter of the global forest area. There are also about 13.5 billion trees outside forests in drylands. More than 200 experts with knowledge of the land and land uses in specific dryland regions conducted the assessment, using freely available satellite imagery and a newly developed survey methodology. The pioneering study by FAO and many partners will be fully reported later in 2016.

From the 19th to the 23rd of January 2015, in Rome, FAO, WRI and IUCN with funding support of EU-ACP and GEF, organized a workshop on “Monitoring and assessment of drylands: forests, rangelands, trees and agrosilvopastoral systems”. Gathering 80 participants from countries and international organizations. This event led to the “Rome Promise” in which participants agreed to: (i) Form an open-ended collaborative network or community of practice to advance monitoring and assessment of drylands, including understanding of their users, (ii) Communicate the value and importance of drylands monitoring to relevant stakeholders, including policy makers and resource partners, and (iii) Develop a dynamic roadmap for collaborative action

The primary oblective of this publication is to provide an overview of the actual status and potential of forests and rangelands, their potential contribution to national economies and their impact on dependent populations in the Near East. It examines major issues, challenges and opportunities related to the forests and rangeland sector and provides information to decision-makers, forest and range managers, scientists and wider public, enabling them to think about weaknesses, strengths and opportunities of the sector and to devise adequate strategies to protect and conserve the natural resource base for the present and future generations.

This document is an attempt to provide an overview of the current state and issues related to the growing of oil trees in the Near East. It examines the opportunities from/and benefits of oil trees that are thought of relevance to decision-makers, forest and range managers and other stakeholders and provides the type of information that can facilitate the decision making on policy options and strategies.