Indicator 15.3.1 Proportion of land that is degraded over total land area
The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) defines land degradation as the "reduction or loss of the biological or economic productivity and complexity of rain fed cropland, irrigated cropland, or range, pasture, forest and woodlands resulting from a combination of pressures, including land use and management practices". Under this definition, the extent of land degradation for reporting on SDG Indicator 15.3.1 is calculated using its three sub-indicators: land productivity, land cover, and soil organic carbon. The indicator will contribute to track progress towards SDG Target 15.3.
Custodian agency: United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)
Contributing agencies: Conservation International (CI), European Space Agency (ESA), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Group on Earth Observation Land Degradation Neutrality Initiative (GEO-LDN), International Soil Reference and Information Centre (ISRIC), International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC), United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Environment (UNEP), World Resources Institute (WRI), United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
Target 15.3
By 2030, combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world.
Impact
Indicator 15.3.1 will assess the progress towards a land degradation neutral world.
Key results
The negative trend in land degradation continues, affecting the lives of 1.3 billion people
Between 2015 and 2019, the world has been losing at least 100 million hectares of healthy and productive land every year. This amounts to an area twice the size of Greenland lost over 4 years. These worsening trends impact the lives of 1.3 billion people, who are estimated to be directly exposed to land degradation. From 2000 to 2019, in Eastern Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Central Asia, at least 20 percent of the total land area was degraded, while most other regions were over 10 percent. Trends since 2015 show that land in sub-Saharan Africa, Western Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean and Southern Asia is degrading considerably faster than the global average, with increases of 6 percent to 8 percent. These are conservative estimates based on just three sub-indicators: changes in land cover, land productivity and organic carbon in soil.
Capacity development
4/ 5
2023
[FAO x UNSD Brown Bag webinar] A Shiny Application to Track the Progress on Food and Agriculture-related SDG Indicators
Virtual Event, 04/05/2023
FAO has recently launched the FAO SDG Progress Assessment App: a web-based tool designed to automatize the assessment of progress made at the national, regional, and global level towards the achievement of the SDGs. The developed tool allows measuring the cu...
19/ 9
2022
Report's launch: "Tracking progress on food and agriculture-related SDG indicators 2022"
Hybrid Event, 19/09/2022
Seven years into the 2030 Agenda, there is an urgent need to understand where the world stands in eliminating hunger and food insecurity, as well as in ensuring sustainable agriculture. FAO's new report, “Tracking progress on food and agriculture-related SDG indicators”, offers analysis and trends on indicators across eight SDGs (1, 2, 5, 6, 10, 12, 14 and 15), highlighting areas o...
Methodology
Tier: I
Data
- SDG Indicator Global Database
- SEPAL Forest and Land Monitoring for Climate Action
- FAOSTAT - SDG Indicators