Combating Land Degradation in Production Landscapes: Learning from GEF Projects Applying Integrated Approaches

Land degradation is a critical global environmental issue. It directly affects the livelihoods of millions of people, many of them poor and vulnerable in the world’s drylands, where more than 500 million hectares of land is degraded. It also negatively affects the world’s ability to increase the production of food that is necessary to feed the rapidly growing global population. It is therefore critical to maintain the environmental health and sustainability of production landscapes. This requires land management approaches that take into account all key natural resource components, principally soil, water and biomass. For this reason, the GEF’s work in land degradation, specifically desertification and deforestation, emphasizes the need to take an integrated approach to sustainable land management. This publication reviews the GEF’s portfolio of experiences dating back to 2002. Since that time the GEF has invested close to half a billion US$ in more than 100 integrated land management projects, and leveraged more than US$2 billion in co-financing. This report analyzes how the GEF financing has been able to catalyze the application of integrated approaches to combat land degradation