Green Growth

They deliver diverse, healthy, safe, sufficient, and affordable food, and ensure improved livelihoods and greater access to natural resources and sustainability of essential ecosystem services. In recent decades, land-use changes – from urbanization, deforestation and unsustainable agricultural and water management practices - contributed to land, soil, and water degradation, loss of arable land, and rapid depletion of water resources. FAO encourages countries to adopt sustainable land, soil and water management to produce more with less – including decent yields, increased soil carbon sequestration, and reducing negative environmental impacts – to work towards a sustainable future for the planet and its people.

Nature-based agricultural practices harness the ability of nature to sustain ecosystem services for agricultural production, mitigating and adapting to climate change, and enhancing biodiversity. These practices contribute to the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. For instance, SLWM can prevent soil erosion, capture nutrients and improve soil moisture to combat drought, restore habitats that are crucial to watershed and ecosystem health, and support biodiversity.

For instance, by increasing water retention and filtration, enhancing nutrient cycling, enhancing soil biodiversity, and incrementing yields through soil organic carbon sequestration.

FAO provides countries with technical support to return natural resources to the product cycle at the end of their use. For instance, non-conventional water (NCW) – such as low-quality water – can play an essential role in mitigating local water scarcity and climate change by implementing an integrated One Water One Health/Resource Recovery. This helps to recover essential crop nutrients such as N and P while capturing the GHG methane during wastewater treatment and removing pathogens and pollutants. Through the Green Cities initiative, FAO and its partners work to identify the linkages between urban and peri-urban areas to spur innovation under the water-food-energy nexus.

However, fragmentation and conflict remain pervasive features of water and land governance systems; land and water users are distributed across multiple sectors and jurisdictions (e.g., energy, food, environment, trade, industry) and there is often a mismatch in the roles and response of public and private actors. Policy interventions for land and water management need to address the continued viability of smallholders, as it is critical for local food security in many low-income countries. Technical and managerial innovation can be targeted under the green growth agenda to address priorities and accelerate transformation. These encompass the adoption of new technologies and management approaches through digital data and AI - going beyond the farm gate to address governance.

Responsible governance of land and water relies on processes that articulate the interests of citizens, mediate their differences, and ensure that their land and water rights and duties are exercised with transparency and equity, in line with the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests (VGGT) endorsed by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) in 2012. Water Tenure has also gained wider recognition for addressing governance in relation to access to water resources.

Ensuring adequate financing for land and water and promoting a strong enabling environment can help reduce risky investments and thus drive commercial investments. Important factors include coherent water policies, robust water allocation, water and land tenure and transparency on roles, water availability, and land suitability.