The review was conducted with the aim to provide guidance for future engagement/investments, in particular in the context of recent AU declarations on agriculture and on land restoration by NEPAD, GEF, TerrAfrica, the Great Green Wall Initiative for the Sahel and Sahara (GGWISS), UN agencies and other donors. This paper provides an abridged summary of the findings for easier access by country policy / decision makers, agencies, development partners and donors, as a basis for informing future interventions for scaling-up sustainable land management (SLM).

Land degradation reduces food productivity and security, disrupts vital ecosystem functions and increases carbon emissions and vulnerability to climate change. 52 percent of the land used for agriculture worldwide is estimated to already be affected. Studies indicate that land degradation directly affects 1.5 billion people around the world. Despite the seriousness of the issue, there is still limited access to resources and planning tools for sustainable land management. Between 2015 to 2019, FAO implemented the project ''Decision support for mainstreaming and scaling up of sustainable land management (DS-SLM)’’ at a global level across 15 countries. The aim of the project was to improve access to information on land management best practices. The final evaluation examines the impacts and sustainability of the project results. What has contributed to, or hindered, the implementation of the planned activities? What has been the effect of linkages and partnerships between the project and other major country initiatives?

This book compiles a set of 26 papers that present the direct, practical experiences and results of a large number of local practitioners and experts that supported the Transboundary agro-ecosystem management project of the Kagera river basin (Kagera TAMP) during the period 2010-2015. The book has been compiled by the Land and Water Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to reflect the wide range of experiences, approaches and tools that were used for promoting participatory diagnostics, adaptive management and adoption of sustainable land and agro-ecosystem management (SLaM) practices from farm to watershed / landscape scale. The project was supported by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the Governments of the four countries that share the transboundary basin - Burundi, Rwanda, the United Republic of Tanzania and Uganda and project partners. It is hoped that the lessons learned are considered and taken up by the Governments and the TerrAfrica partnership for scaling up and mainstreaming SLaM as part of the wider set of lessons learned from the 36 projects in 26 countries under the Terrafrica Strategic Investment programme, including Kagera TAMP.

This publication is a product of the GEF-funded FAO project ‘Decision Support for Mainstreaming and Scaling Out Sustainable Land Management (DS-SLM)’ which has developed a decision support framework (DSF). The DSF integrates experience from work with land degradation (LD) and SLM into an overall strategy for mainstreaming and scaling out SLM at different spatial and temporal scales. This publication serves as a step-by-step guide for the application and implementation of the DSF during planning, design and implementation of SLM interventions. It includes elements – both in its modules and proposed tools and methods – which can support countries in pursuing land degradation neutrality (LDN).

The aim of this report is to define the strategy for the Science and Policy Interface under Component 1 of the Resilient Food Systems Programme (RFS) Hub. Under this component, FAO and UN-Environment Programme, in partnership with RFS country projects and a range of other actors and platforms and institutions in sub-Saharan Africa, aim to address institutional and policy barriers to inclusion of ecosystem services-aware approaches into policies and investments for improved and sustainable smallholder agriculture and natural resources. The focus of this component is the facilitation of dialogue, models, policies, and institutions that bridge the agricultural and environmental agendas and constituencies, at various scales.