Desire for Greener Land

No. of case studies
Degradation types addressed
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Cropping
management
Water
management
Cross-slope
barriers
Grazing land
management
SLM technology groups
Forest
management
Water degradation
Biological degradation
Physical soil deterioration
Chemical soil deterioration
Soil erosion by wind
Soil eroison by water
DESIRE - WOCAT 2012
Figure 2: Degradation types addressed by the DESIRE technologies.
A technology may address several types of degradation
and the total sum of items displayed is therefore
more than the total of 30 technologies.
drylands, is only mentioned in one technology description
of Spain (reduced contour tillage). Another surprising result
is that soil fertility is mentioned as a problem only for four
case studies (Chile, Spain and both Turkish sites).
The only study site to be majorly affected by salinization
is Nestos in Greece, which suffers from seawater intrusion.
However, salinization is also mentioned as a minor degradation
type in the Russian drip irrigation case study.
Stage of SLM intervention
Depending on what stage of land degradation has been
reached, there are three types of SLM intervention that can
be made: (i) prevention of expected land degradation; (ii)
mitigation of on-going land degradation; or (iii) rehabilitation
of already degraded land.
Prevention implies employment of SLM measures that maintain
natural resources and their environmental and productive
function on land, which may be at risk of degradation.
The implication is that good land management practice is
already in place.
Mitigation is intervention intended to reduce ongoing degradation.
This comes in at a stage when degradation has
Spain, Felicitas Bachmann
Stage of SLM intervention
8
27%
5
17%
already begun. The main aim here is to halt further degradation
and to start improving resources and their ecosystem
functions. Mitigation impacts tend to be noticeable in the
short to medium term; the observed impact then provides a
strong incentive for further efforts.
Rehabilitation is required when the land is already degraded
to such an extent that the original use is no longer possible.
In this situation, the land has become practically unproductive
and the ecosystem seriously disturbed. Rehabilitation
usually implies high investment costs with medium- to longterm
benefits.
Inputs and achievements depend very much on the stage
of degradation at which SLM interventions are made. The
best input-benefit ratio will normally be achieved through
measures for prevention, followed by mitigation, and then
rehabilitation 2 . This is confirmed by the DESIRE case studies,
where the technologies for rehabilitation indeed have
a lower cost-benefit ratio than those for prevention and
mitigation. It implies that while the impacts of rehabilitation
efforts can be highly visible, the related achievements need
to be critically considered in terms of the cost and associated
benefits.
Of the 30 technologies analysed here, 12 were classified
as prevention, eight as mitigation and five as combining
mitigation with prevention. Only five were described as
rehabilitation, mostly trying to put highly degraded forest
or grazing land back into production. These include biogas
in Botswana, which allows the forest to regenerate and four
vegetative measures in Cape Verde, Mexico and Morocco,
which use high-value trees and shrubs to rehabilitate gullies
1 ISO, 1996
2 WOCAT, 2007
Analysis of assessed SLM technologies and approaches across DESIRE sites DESIRE – WOCAT 2012
5
16%
12
40%
prevention
prevention / mitigation
mitigation
rehabilitation
DESIRE - WOCAT 2012
Figure 3: Prevention, mitigation or rehabilitation of land
degradation by the 30 case studies.
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