Land-Drought Nexus: Enhancing the Role of Land-Based Interventions in Drought Mitigation and Risk Management. A report of the Science-Policy Interface

This UNCCD-SPI technical report provides well-established scientific evidence for understanding the strong linkages between land use and drought and how management of both is connected through water use. It introduces a new concept of Drought-smart land management (D-SLM) and organizes relevant approaches and practices in fourteen groups across four major classes of land use. The objective is to guide decision makers and land managers working on “proactive drought risk management” towards interventions designed to improve community and ecosystem resilience to drought, ideally leading to higher socioeconomic returns than conventional practices under drought conditions. It also proposes guidance for enhancing five enablers to support adoption, implementation and scaling up of D-SLM. And it brings to the forefront the need for vulnerability and risk assessments in different contexts, covering both natural (climatic, soil and water) and socioeconomic aspects of land and drought management. Proposal 3: Enhancing cross-sectoral collaboration and coordination in national, regional and international policies and programmes to promote the interventions necessary to optimized adoption, implementation and scaling-up of D-SLM to landscape level, focusing on a set of five enablers, including:a). Implementing integrated land use planning and landscape management; b). Strengthening national and local capacity on the multiple benefits of D-SLM across sectors, communities of practice and disciplines, taking into consideration gender integration; c). Ensuring effective local institutions in combination with place-based policies and legal secu-rity on land tenure and water rights to ensure relevant and inclusive design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of land-based interventions to mitigate the effects of drought; d). Developing user-friendly tools which improve the access of policy-makers, planners and practitioners at all levels to geospatial analysis that integrates Earth observations, includ-ing satellite and in-situ data of land, water and meteorology, through the use of geographic information systems, which would allow the integrated monitoring and mapping of land cover, including water bodies, land degradation and drought risk; and e). Mobilizing both conventional and innovative finance, including from public and private inves-tors, in the form of ecosystem service payments, carbon emission offsetting, insurance coverage and investments in sustainable land-based value chains to support and promote D-SLM, ideally concurrent with local and national programming Studies evaluating these D-SLM options from gender lens high-light higher barriers for adoption of D-SLM practices among women than among men due to more restricted access to resources and agricultural advisory services