Towards sustainable land management in the drylands: Scientific connections in monitoring and assessing dryland degradation, climate change and biodiversity

Abstract

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification and its sister conventions, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity, all aim to halt or mitigate the deterioration of the ecological processes on which life depends. Sustainable land management (SLM) is fundamental to achieving the goals of all three Conventions. Changes in land management undertaken to address dryland degradation and desertification can simultaneously reduce net greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to conservation of biodiversity. Management to protect and enhance terrestrial carbon stocks, both in vegetation and soil, is of central importance to all three conventions. Protection of biodiversity conveys stability and resilience to agro-ecosystems and increases carbon storage potential of dryland systems. SLM improves livelihoods of communities dependent on the land. Despite these complementarities between the three environmental goals, tradeoffs often arise in their pursuit. The importance of human-environment interactions to the condition of land compels attention to adaptive management. In order to reconcile concerns and agendas at a higher strategic level, identification of synergies, conflicts, trade-offs, interconnections, feedbacks and spillover effects among multiple objectives, drivers, actions, policies and time horizons are crucial. Once these issues are transparent, coordinated action can be put into place across the three multilateral environmental agreements in the development of strategies and policy measures to support SLM.

A review of methods, data, and models to assess changes in the value of ecosystem services from land degradation and restoration

“…All decisions that involve trade-offs involve valuation, whether implicitly or explicitly (Costanza et al, 1997(Costanza et al, , 2011b(Costanza et al, , 2014. Historically, most land degradation valuations have been focused on marketed physical goods such as food, feed, fibers and fuel production using commodity prices (Barbier, 2000;Cowie et al, 2011;ELD-Initiative, 2013;Nkonya et al, 2013). It is apparent now though, that a more comprehensive assessment of the full range of assets and services of the landscape is necessary to capture its real value for decision making (Costanza et al, 2013).…”

Effects of Land Use Change on Soil Carbon Storage and Water Consumption in an Oasis-Desert Ecotone

“…Our research indicated that in water resource-limited ecosystems, although change of land use has the potential to create higher economic return, it may simultaneously incur ecological risks on watershed health and carbon cycling in both local and nearby systems. Once these ecosystems have been negatively impacted, a sustainable land management plan made with full consideration of human-environment interactions and socioeconomic drivers should be adopted to help the recovery of the disturbed ecosystem (Cowie et al 2011;Eppink et al 2012;Nkonya et al 2011;Schwilch et al 2011), despite the fact that some of the ecosystem services may be permanently lost (Benayas et al 2009). Therefore, management of integrated watersheds should put water resources as the central consideration, as water is a basic resource that constrains many other socio-ecological systems.…”

A method to identify the variable ecosystem services relationship across time: a case study on Yanhe Basin, China

“…Due to the arid climate (low precipitation and high evaporative potential), the ecosystems in semi-arid areas are particularly vulnerable to human disturbances (Cowie et al 2011) and are limited when providing water-based ecosystem services such as water supplies to people. Because of climate change, human activities, steep terrains, and sparse vegetation (Su et al 2012) in the semi-arid areas of the Loess Plateau, serious soil erosion has occurred.…”