Page 104 - FAO-IPCC Expert meeting on climate change

Appendix 01: Speakers’ summary notes
82
The Scientific Conceptual Framework for Land Degradation Neutrality
ANNETTE COWIE
PLENARY SESSION 8:
REGIONAL AND GLOBAL INITIATIVES IN ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE IN FOOD PRODUCTION AND LAND USE
Land resources provide food, feed and fibre, and support the often-overlooked regulating and supporting services on which the provisioning services depend, as well as to cultural services delivered by healthy ecosystems. Pressure on the finite land resources will grow as the world’s population grows and increases in affluence. Increased competition for land resources is likely to increase social and political instability, exacerbating food insecurity, poverty, conflict and migration. Maintenance of the capacity to deliver these ecosystem services will depend on resilience in the face of global environmental change.
However, while demands on the global land resources are increasing, the overall health and productivity of land
is declining. Thus, it is critical to find effective measures to address land degradation. Avoiding and reversing land degradation will have co-benefits for climate change mitigation and adaptation, and also for biodiversity conservation, in addition to enhancing food security and sustainable livelihoods.
Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) is a new initiative intended to halt the ongoing loss of healthy land through land degradation, based on a “no net loss” approach. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) defines LDN as “a state whereby the amount and quality of land resources necessary to support ecosystem functions and services and enhance food security remain stable or increase within specified temporal and spatial scales and ecosystems”.1 The “Scientific Conceptual Framework for Land Degradation Neutrality” is intended to provide a scientifically-sound basis for understanding, implementing and evaluating LDN, and to inform the development of practical guidance for pursuing LDN and monitoring progress towards the LDN target. The LDN conceptual framework focuses on the neutrality aspect of LDN, highlighting those features that differ from historical approaches to land degradation assessment and management.
The aspirational goal of LDN is to maintain or enhance the natural capital of the land and associated land-based ecosystem services. Pursuit of LDN therefore requires effort to avoid further net loss of the land-based natural capital relative to a reference state, or baseline. Therefore, unlike past approaches, LDN creates a target for both land use planning and land degradation management, promoting a dual-pronged approach of measures to avoid or reduce degradation of land, combined with measures to reverse past degradation. The intention is that losses are balanced by gains, in order to achieve a position of no net loss of healthy and productive land. The definition emphasises the importance of ecosystem services in achieving food security. The objectives of LDN can be summarised as:
• Maintain or improve the sustainable delivery of ecosystem services.
• Maintain or improve productivity, in order to enhance food security.
• Increase resilience of the land and populations dependent on the land.
• Seek synergies with other social, economic and environmental objectives; and
• Reinforce responsible and inclusive governance of land.
The goal of LDN – to maintain or enhance the land-based natural capital, and the ecosystem services that flow from
it, including the supporting processes required to deliver this goal - is the foundation for the conceptual framework. The framework is presented as five modules: Vision of LDN, which captures the goal that LDN is intended to achieve; Frame of Reference, that explains the LDN baseline; Mechanism for Neutrality, that describes the counterbalancing mechanism; Achieving Neutrality, that presents the theory of change (logic model) articulating the pathway for implementing LDN, including preparatory analysis and enabling policies; and Monitoring Neutrality, which presents the
UNCCD. 2016. Report of the Conference of the Parties on its twelfth session, held in Ankara from 12 to 23 October 2015. Part two: Actions. ICCD/COP(12)/20/Add.1. United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), Bonn. See Decision3/COP.12, page 8. Parties of the UNCCD recognize that for the purpose of this Convention, this definition is intended to apply to affected areas as defined in the text of the Convention.
1
FAO-IPCC Expert meeting on climate change, land use and food security