Invest in climate-smart soil and land health

Better soil health can increase agricultural productivity. Restoration activities can build on-farm resilience and contribute to climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Land and soil health surveys can improve crop modeling predictions under various climate scenarios and guide more targeted interventions.

Currently, most assessments of land and soil health do not consider the social, ecological, and biophysical constraints, or acknowledge the variations in the landscape.

The Land Degradation Surveillance Framework (LDSF) assesses multiple indicators at the same geo-referenced location across landscapes. It provides a biophysical baseline at landscape level and a monitoring and evaluation framework to assess the processes of land degradation and the effectiveness of rehabilitation measures over time (Figure 3).

With the LDSF, vulnerable areas that may require more investment in terms of land restoration can be identified early on and priorities determined.