EC-UBA-IASS together with experts from the communities of soils, land, science, policy and NGOs, are proposing a sustainable development goal to achieve a Land Degradation Neutral World and have developed a set of targets and sub-targets.
Based on the decision at Rio+20 to launch a process to develop a set of sustainable development goals (SDGs), the agreement to strive to achieve a land degradation neutral world (LDNW) in the context of sustainable development (“The Future We Want”, A/RES/66/288), and following up on the discussions held at the first Global Soil Week 2012; a workshop was held at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, Germany, with the title: “Putting Soils and Land on the SDGs Agenda: defining potential indicators”. The aim was to address the role of soils and land in the process of the development of the SDGs with a focus on a LDNW. The participants of the workshop have continued working together and involving further stakeholders to develop the ideas discussed and prepared a paper which includes a proposal on a set of illustrative LDNW targets and sub-targets of physical and socio-economic nature.
Stakeholders from around the world will come together at the second Global Soil Week “Losing Ground?” (27-31 October 2013, in Berlin) within the framework of a session titled “Soils and Land in the Sustainable Development Goals – A proposal for global targets and indicators” to develop a collaborative process to join forces amongst current initiatives to put soil and land resources on the global development agenda.