Within the context of Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN), Turkey aims to maintain and increase the amount of healthy and productive land resources in line with the national development priorities.. In this context Turkey has already established the Basin Monitoring and Evaluation System (BMES) which will act as a key infrastructure for LDN and it will inform the decision-making system for LDN target setting as well as monitoring the status of land degradation/desertification and the success of basin wide sustainable land and forest management (SLM/SFM) activities

The Project sets out to develop a model for LDN target setting, planning and implementation in the Sakarya basin for upscaling at national level in line with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Target 15.3.

The project will build knowledge and communication products in the area of SLM and SFM practices that can be applied to achieve LDN at sub-national and national levels in Turkey as well as other countries. A national LDN guideline that describes how LDN should be measured at different scales and how gains and losses could be balanced from the micro-basin, basin, landscape and up to the national scale will also be prepared. Thus, the project will enhance communication and visibility of LDN at the national level through support to dissemination of best practices and lessons learnt and the field level through support to demonstrations of SLM and SFM to achieve LDN and counterbalancing of gains and losses.

This project on operationalizing the LDN concept is the first of its kind in Turkey and is also linked to the global pilot project on LDN coordinated by the UNCCD. As such, it will generate new and innovative approaches to multi-sectoral land use planning based on testing and implementation in the Sakarya Basin. The experiences are expected to be replicable across Turkey through activities of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) and opportunities for scaling up best practices will also be explored in the context of Turkey’s sharing of experiences with other countries and the UNCCD, especially in Central Asia. For more information click here.