Background document United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, The Economics of Desertification, Land Degradation and Drought: Methodologies and Analysis for Decision-Making

AMMANN, W. (ED.),; PAK SUM LOW (LEAD AUTHORS); L. POULSEN (LEAD AUTHORS); ABRAHAM, E; D. AMWATA; M. ARANÍBAR; F, BASIC; H. BELHOUCHETTE; V. BLUJDEA; G. DASCAL; J. DE LIMA; H. FRANCISCO; A. MEKONNEN; I. HANNAM; J. KABUBO-MARIARA; K. KELLNER; D. KIMEU MBUVI; R.MORERA; A. NAVARRO NAZ; S. NOEL; N. OLSEN; O. RAKOID; M. SEELY; P. SHI; M. SOKOLOVSKA; , L. STRINGER; , H. TALLIS; B. VRSCAJ; G. WONG; X. YANG; V. YATSUKHNA

UNCCD

Lugar: Bonn; Año: 2013 p. 57

978-92-95043-65-7

Land is a vital resource for producing food, preserving biodiversity, facilitating the natural management of water systems and acting as a carbon store. Appropriate land management can protect and maximize these services for society. Conversely, desertification, land degradation and drought (DLDD) have accelerated during the twentieth and twenty-first century, particularly in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas. The underlying biophysical and anthropogenic causes of land degradation are multiple and overlapping. To effectively tackle DLDD, its drivers should be addressed and instruments designed to incentivize the sustainable management of lands. Embedded in the understanding of the ?economics of DLDD? is a set of methodologies for assessing the true societal impacts of land degradation. These form the cornerstone for determining how to best allocate financial, technical and human resources to tackle DLDD. To this end, the first part of the background paper estimates the costs of DLDD, or conversely, the benefits of sustainable land management (SLM), for different parts of the world. A toolbox illustrates how the various benefits of SLM may be assessed. Consideration is also given to the costs (implementation, transaction and opportunity costs) associated with modifying current land-use practices to be more sustainable. Any comprehensive DLDD cost-benefit analysis (CBA) should account for both benefits and costs of halting land degradation. CBA is a powerful tool to help decision makers objectively choose among different land-use management strategies and thereby pursue effective, resilience-building interventions when funding is limited. More broadly, the resilience of any nation, community or smallholder can be strengthened through investment into the natural, political, financial, human or physical capital of the system under consideration. Striving towards a land degradation neutral world ? whereby land degradation is avoided by sustainably managing land or offset through land restoration ? promoted by a set of regulatory and economic instruments is key to resilience building. Economic instruments for scaling up SLM hinge on the idea that those entities that provide benefits by lowering, for instance, off-site impacts of land degradation, should be compensated for their efforts, while those that engender land degradation or damage soil productivity must pay in accordance with the costs they inflict. Regulatory approaches typically serve to build capacity for implementing SLM and enable reforms that address tenure security and imperfect capital markets. On a global basis, investments in SLM are currently dwarfed by the flow of finance to activities that cause unsustainable land degradation. The corporate and financial sector therefore has an important role in generating finance for SLM on the one hand, and lessening the environmental impact of their supply chain on the other. A broader perspective is taken in the latter part of the background paper, which exemplifies the interlinkages and synergies of three Rio conventions. In particular, it argues that there is significant scope for mainstreaming the use of economic instruments to tackle biodiversity loss, poverty alleviation, land degradation, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. This, however, is contingent upon the rigorous monitoring of and baseline-setting for harmonized biophysical and socioeconomic indicators. Significant advances have already been made in this respect. The paper concludes by showing how these advances can help scale up economic assessments and national green accounting to improve decision-making and create effective instruments to change the very incentives that guide how we manage our lands.