Integrated Approaches for Multifunctional Landscapes
As economies and populations grow, land degradation and growing competition for land threatens to multiply this challenge.
As originally featured on World Agroforestry.org
Opening the IUCN/ICRAF event ‘Integrated approaches for multifunctional landscapes: connecting LDN, biodiversity and climate change’ at the recent UNCCD summit, Ms Barbut laid out in stark terms the challenge of meeting the world’s growing demand for food. The global community has committed itself to meeting environmental targets including achieving land degradation neutrality (LDN), safeguarding biodiversity and mitigating climate change, and developing countries in particular are struggling with the added burdens this requires.
Yet many of the speakers at the event, including Ms Barbut, also emphasized that working on multiple issues could have positive effects. IUCN’s Jonathan Davies argued that because tools such as integrated land use planning and sustainable land management treat land as a multifunctional asset, they can “provide multiple benefits from the same piece of land at the same time”.
