Legal & Scientific Integrity in Advancing a 'Land Degradation Neutral World'

摘要

At this point, LDNW remains more of a vision than a reality. The Rio+20 Outcome Document provides a foundation from which to proceed, but it is not yet clear how much further traction LDNW can secure, or whether it is the right pathway forward. We feel cautiously optimistic, however, that if well designed, it would represent an advancement in desertification policy and land policy more generally. Implementing an LDNW regime is unlikely to rapidly escalate land degradation up the world's agenda or to quickly transform an ailing governance framework into a robust and effective one. Nevertheless, it holds much promise, in part because there is such universal agreement that the current efforts to combat desertification and land degradation are struggling and insufficient. Certainly, there is some risk in broadening the focus away from desertification alone, to include all land types within a single program's goal. On the other hand, LDNW also offers an important crystallization of the concept of land as central to a number of development objectives, which may help attract funding that otherwise might not have gone specifically to desertification. Moreover, a neutrality framework-challenging as it may be in some ways-offers the distinct advantage of requiring, as a prerequisite for any ability to claim success, a more rigorous assessment and quantification of the state of land degradation in the world currently. To be sure, such an assessment will prove difficult and is likely to be imperfect, but it will nevertheless be an important first step to building accountability into the land degradation management regime that in turn unlocks more international funding.