Voices from the land: Restoring soil and enriching lives

As vital to our existence as air or water, land is one of our greatest shared assets – and degradation of that land one our most pressing common challenges. Unchecked degradation threatens not only human wellbeing but that of the entire planet, contributing to accelerating climate change and loss of biodiversity. Today, with a quarter of our land already degraded and almost half the global population directly affected by land degradation, we are losing this precious resource at a time when we can least afford the social, economic or environmental impacts of this loss. The continued wellbeing of both people and planet relies on our ability to protect, manage and restore our land more quickly than we degrade it. The stories in this book provide a timely reminder of how local and global collaboration to achieve land degradation neutrality can tip the balance in our favor, offering a foundation on which to build a healthy, equitable and prosperous future.