Restoring degraded land will generate co-benefits for climate change mitigation and adaptation and more broadly for human and societal well-being and the economy

Almut led an invited review paper to ARER that summarises the multiple challenges of land degradation and highlights the many co-benefits arising from restoring degraded lands. In light of continued population growth, increases per-capita demand for may land commodities and climate change, reversing degradation -and restoration- is an enormous challenge. As recognised by the UN in its current Decade of Restoration, multiple synergies exist between fostering restoration in international policies and goals related to, for example, the Paris Agreement, land degradation neutrality targets, and the post-2020 biodiversity targets.

The review was written by a number of authors who also contributed to the IPCC SRCCL (https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/), and synthesises across some of the chapters in this report as well as building on more recent studies in the scientific literature.

The paper is available at:

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-environ-012320-054809