Economics of Land Degradation and Improvement – A Global Assessment for Sustainable Development

Prof. Joachim von BraunJoachim von Braun is Director of the Center for Development Research (ZEF), Bonn University, and Professor for economic and technological change.  von Braun’s main research interests are in sustainable economic development, poverty reduction, food and nutrition security, resource economics, trade, science and technology policy. He is chair of the Bioeconomy Council of the Federal German Government; Vice-President of the NGO “Welthungerhilfe”, Vice Chair of the Board of Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), member of two German Academies, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, and member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences of the Vatican; fellow of African Academy of Science. He was Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) based in Washington, DC, U.S.A. from 2002 to 2009, and President of the International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE). Dr. Alisher MirzabaevDr. Alisher Mirzabaev is a senior researcher at the Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn. His current research areas include economics of land degradation, bioenergy and the water-energy-food security nexus. Before joining ZEF in 2009, he was an economist with the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA). He holds a PhD Degree from the University of Bonn in Germany for his thesis on the economics of climate change in Central Asia.  Dr. Ephraim M. NkonyaDr. Ephraim Nkonya is a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington D.C. Ephraim leads an IFPRI program on land resources for poverty reduction. He earned his masters and Ph.D. degrees in agricultural economics from Kansas State university from 1992 – 1999. He has published widely in referred journals, books and book chapters on issues related to natural resource management, poverty reduction, climate change and role of rural services on poverty reduction. He is a member of the editorial board of the African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics. He also serves as a reviewer to a large number of referred journals.

• Introduction.- Part I: Concepts and Methods.- Methods.- Institutional Framework of Taking Action Against Land Degradation.- Part II: Global.- Global Extent Of Land Degradation.- Ground-Truthing of Land Degradation Mapping.- The Global Cost of Land Degradation.- Global Drivers of Land Degradation.- ELD in Global Rangelands.- Part III: Regional.- ELD in Sub-Saharan Africa.- ELD in Central Asia.- Part IV: Country Case Studies: Cost, Drivers and Action Against of Land Degradation.- Argentina.- Bhutan.- China.- Ethiopia.- India.- Kenya.- Niger.- Russia.- Senegal.- Tanzania and Malawi.-Uzbekistan.- Part V: Lessons Learnt and Implications.- What Can We Learn from the Cost of Inaction Against Land Degradation?.- What Can We Learn from the Success Stories of Addressing or Preventing Land Degradation?.- What are the Low-hanging Fruits for Addressing Land Degradation?.-What the World Needs to do to Build Momentum of Addressing Land Degradation?.