Land Degradation and Poverty
Two of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are to “end
poverty” (Goal 1) and to “strive to achieve a land-degradation neutral world” (Goal
15.3), which requires that any land degradation is fully offset by restoration of
degraded land. A fundamental question is whether these two SDGs are compatible.
Ending global poverty while at the same time balancing land degradation with
restoration suggests that there may be potential tradeoffs in attaining these two
SDGs. Accurately assessing these tradeoffs will require, in turn, a clear
understanding of the relationship between land degradation and poverty. Despite
decades of research, it is not obvious that such a consensus view exists in the
literature.
