Recover, Restore, Protect: the International Day to Combat Drought and Desertification

Once more, the Dryland Forestry team cut across silos and joined efforts with the Land and Water Division of FAO to celebrate Desertification and Drought Day!

One-quarter of the global land area is already affected by land degradation to some degree, to which around 12 million hectares are added every year. Restoration of 350 million hectares of degraded land between now and 2030 could generate USD 9 trillion in ecosystem services and take an additional 13-26 gigatons of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.

Further, said restoration has been estimated to generate between USD 7 and USD 30 in benefit for every dollar invested. Restoration of natural forests would additionally contribute significantly to carbon sequestration in the fight against catastrophic climate change: natural forests can remove around 3 Tg carbon from the atmosphere per hectare, 40 times more than planted forests.

Integrated forest and land planning and monitoring, as well as sustainable soil management have an enormous potential to create synergies with climate change, COVID-19 recovery, and poverty reduction goals in the context of global land restoration efforts, including in the world’s drylands and salt affected areas. And healthy soil can provide multiple ecosystem services that can help dealing with many of current global challenges, as salt-affected soils have impact on agriculture, water resources and the overall environment.

This is what led the two Divisions to organize the webinar entitled “Building up: planned, participatory and integrated land management”. This partnership was exemplified by the opening and closing remarks, respectively featuring Ms Mette Wilkie, Director of the Forestry Division, and Ms Sasha Koo Oshima, Director of the Land and Water Division.

The webinar explored the ways in which this potential could be realized, including examples of ongoing initiatives and tools that are being developed and trialed to support the decision-making and monitoring of restoration activities for healthy lands.

To kick-off the event, our own Ms Fidaa F Haddad presented the DRIP (Dryland Restoration Initiative Platform), formally launched on 3 June 2021 at the Global Landscapes Forum. The DRIP, now embedded in the Framework for Ecosystem Restoration Monitoring (FERM) supports measuring restoration efforts with clear attention to the drylands’ context based on the recommendation from the Working Group on dryland forests and agrosilvopastoral systems and in coordination with the UNCCD.

The tool will also facilitate the analysis of past and present dryland restoration projects and highlights best practices and successful approaches as well as the challenges experienced. This will not only support practitioners and decision-makers in continuously improving these efforts, but it will also contribute to information-based funding decisions for restoration initiatives. 

Moctar Sacande, from the Action Against Desertification Team, presented the importance of taking into consideration the livelihoods of the communities that are directly affected by land degradation. For this, he presented the Sustainable Livelihood Framework: a survey questionnaire to gather multi-stakeholder information related to the need and preferences of the communities.

Ronald Vargas and Feras Ziadat from the Land and Water Division reminded that through planning and sustainable management options we can reverse the trend and go from degradation to resilience and truly achieve sustainability but only through the consideration of bigger pictures, context, political stability and community engagement. We need and must implement an integrated and participatory approach to tackle ecosystem restoration management and achieve the ambitious goals of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.