Keywords:

sustainable land management (SLM), land degradation and restoration, ecosystem service, natural hazards, livelihood

Organizers:

  • Akito Kono, Doctoral Student, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Japan
  • Keiichi Kimura, Doctoral Student, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Japan
  • Toshiya Okuro, Professor, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Japan

Session description:

Land degradation causes reduction or loss of the biological or economic productivity and complexity, resulting from land uses or from processes arising from human activities and habitation patterns. Specifically under highly valuable and changing environments, excessive human activities not only accelerate degradation processes, but also enhance the impacts of natural hazards and then could cause downward spirals of degradation and disasters. As land degradation is also defined as “the processes of landscape changes caused by miss-match between natural land conditions and land use by human”, it is necessary to reconstruct new land use systems based on new human-environment relations which can realize sustainable use of ecosystem services. Sustainable Land Management (SLM) has become a mainstream concept to combat desertification/land degradation, and defined as a set of technologies, policies and activities to achieve sustainable land productivity, livelihood and environmental conservation through appropriate soil and water management to mitigate hazards and disasters.
This session aims to share the current knowledge of SLM approach at multi spatio-temporal scales, identify future perspectives of researches which should be further developed, and propose implication to SDGs.
We invite contributions from various aspects of basic and applied researches ranging from case studies to synthesis studies, focusing on Asian issues. But comparisons with other parts of the world for global synthesis are not excluded. Regional researches on restoration of biodiversity and ecosystem services, reduction of extreme weather phenomena and disaster risks, soil conservation and sustainable resource use are particularly encouraged.