The proposed Sustainable Development Goals might just be able to “turn us into better [land] users than any other generation, but only if we are bold enough to adopt sustainable land use practices, to accord land rights and to restore degraded land to meet future growth,” writes Monique Barbut, executive secretary of the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification, in an article on DevEx.

Access to land is critical to producing food, but competing demands for land – including from population growth, better lifestyles, hydropower, biofuels, infrastructure development, forests, biodiversity conservation and watersheds – mean there is little land left to spare and choices need to be made.

Barbut advocates for agricultural approaches that minimize water use, increase yields and use land already under cultivation or that has been restored to health. In particular, practices such as conservation agriculture, no-till agriculture, evergreen agriculture, agroforestry, farmer managed natural regeneration and holistic management could be better utilized.

Land rights are particularly important as they motivate users to manage land for the long-term; to increase their resilience and reduce the cost of adaptation. “Without land rights, most of the SDGs will be unachievable,” says Barbut.

“We should avoid degrading new land to meet future growth and, instead, recover and re-use as much degraded land as possible.” An estimated 2 billion hectares of degraded agricultural land and forests has potential for immediate restoration, and Barbut believes this could meet the need for new land to satisfy the growing demand for food until 2050.

“There is no shortage of productive land. Only poor land management and the lack of political will to stir up land users and consumers into effective land stewards.”

Read the full story: Ambitious SDGs are empty without bold action on land