As the world’s population continues to rise, there is an ever increasing demand for our land to produce a diverse range of products such as food, timber, and fuel. Our growing need for these goods is leading to higher levels of competition between different land uses and, as a result, land users. Not only is the quantity of land available for production under current technical and economic conditions limited, but there is also growing evidence that the quality of our land is degrading. As a result, healthy land that is available for production is becoming an increasingly scarce resource, and there is a great need to make better use of what we have available, both now and in the future.
This Practitioner's Guide: Pathways and Options for Action and Stakeholder Engagement has been developed to facilitate engagement between stakeholders to identify options and pathways to action that can help tackle or adapt to the challenges of land degradation. It is based on materials developed for a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) on ‘Options and pathways for action: Stakeholder Engagement’. These materials include literature review, course materials and presentations from experts in the field, as well as extracts from assignments submitted by students on the MOOC.