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Lennart Olsson, LUCSUS

Lennart Olsson

Professor, Docent

Lennart Olsson, LUCSUS

Restoring Degraded Lands

Author

  • Almut Arneth
  • Lennart Olsson
  • Annette Cowie
  • Karl Heinz Erb
  • Margot Hurlbert
  • Werner A. Kurz
  • Alisher Mirzabaev
  • Mark D.A. Rounsevell

Summary, in English

Land degradation continues to be an enormous challenge to human societies, reducing food security, emitting greenhouse gases and aerosols, driving the loss of biodiversity, polluting water, and undermining a wide range of ecosystem services beyond food supply and water and climate regulation. Climate change will exacerbate several degradation processes. Investment in diverse restoration efforts, including sustainable agricultural and forest land management, as well as land set aside for conservation wherever possible, will generate co-benefits for climate change mitigation and adaptation and morebroadly for human and societal well-being and the economy. This review highlights the magnitude of the degradation problem and some of the key challenges for ecological restoration. There are biophysical as well as societal limits to restoration. Better integrating policies to jointly address poverty, land degradation, and greenhouse gas emissions and removals is fundamental to reducing many existing barriers and contributing to climate-resilient sustainable development.

Department/s

  • LUCSUS (Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies)

Publishing year

2021

Language

English

Pages

569-599

Publication/Series

Annual Review of Environment and Resources

Volume

46

Document type

Journal article review

Publisher

Annual Reviews

Topic

  • Environmental Sciences related to Agriculture and Land-use
  • Physical Geography

Keywords

  • biodiversity
  • carbon cycle
  • climate change adaptation
  • climate change mitigation
  • global environmental change

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1543-5938