Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN)

Dear Colleagues,

With this notification, we would like to invite you to submit your research to our Special Issue on Land Degradation Neutrality.

In 2015, the United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of 17 goals aimed to be the roadmap for society to move from the exploitation to the sustainable use of our planet’s resources and from inequality, poverty, and hunger to a proper education and good life for all. A robust soil–water system is essential to achieve most of those SDGs. In this Special Issue, we want to focus on SDG15.3, which is part of SDG 15, Life on Land, and aims at achieving Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) and land restoration. Ever since the SDGs were adopted by all UN members, it has been under discussion how to implement SDG 15.3. Although scientist and policymakers are still debating about the definition of Land Degradation, estimations show that 75% of the land worldwide is degraded. Therefore, urgent action is needed to find solutions that can be implemented on different levels of scale (global, national, regional, local) and at different institutional levels (implementation, governance, awareness building, financing), taking into account the stakeholders’ interests and culture and the availability of financial and natural capitals.

For this Special Issue, we invite papers addressing any of these topics:

• LDN from a biophysical point of view:
  • Soil degradation and Land Degradation Neutrality target setting
  • Reviews on LDN processes
  • Soil- and land-related SDG indicators
  • Different scales of LDN implementation
  • Restoration versus halting degradation
  • LDN and tipping points
• LDN from a governance point of view:
  • Soil and land degradation inventory and target setting
  • Land Stewardship
  • Instruments for awareness building
  • Soil and land degradation policy and management instruments and measures
  • Area approach and spatial planning instruments
  • Valorisation instruments for soil and land
  • Public–Private soil and land issues
  • Data monitoring and evaluation instruments
• LDN from a societal point of view
  • Public–private cooperation in LDN implementation
  • LDN in relation to societal challenges
  • Awareness building instruments
  • Stakeholder involvement and LDN
• LDN from a financial point of view
  • Business models to come to LDN
  • Natural Capital financing
  • Regenerative economy concepts
  • Funding instruments

Dr. Saskia Visser
Dr. Jan de Leeuw
Dr. Saskia Keesstra
Ir. Margot de Cleen
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.