WHY SUSTAINABLE LAND MANAGEMENT? THE CASE OF THE MEDITERRANEAN BASIN

The document advocates for Sustainable Land Management (SLM) as an integrated approach to combat land degradation, desertification, and climate change, with a specific focus on the Mediterranean Basin. It identifies four primary barriers to SLM implementation—economic, educational, institutional, and monitoring—and suggests that mainstreaming SLM into broader policy frameworks can overcome these obstacles. In the Mediterranean Basin, where water availability is the most critical limiting factor, the brief proposes specific SLM actions such as reforestation, improving irrigation efficiency, and preserving traditional extensive systems to manage the water budget. The authors highlight the Mediterranean Strategy for Sustainable Development (MSSD) 2016-2025 and the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) as key institutional frameworks that can facilitate the scaling of local SLM successes to a regional level.

• Sustainable Land Management (SLM) is an integrated approach designed to meet human needs for goods while maintaining the long-term productive potential of land resources and their environmental functions, specifically increasing resilience to climate change and addressing land degradation, desertification, biodiversity loss, and water scarcity.
• The implementation of SLM faces four primary categories of barriers and opportunities: economic (e.g., access to technology and subsidies), educational (e.g., local training and transdisciplinary research), institutional (e.g., land tenure security and government commitment), and monitoring (e.g., development of qualitative and quantitative indicators).
• SLM can serve as a common framework to achieve multiple UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically SDG1 (no poverty), SDG2 (zero hunger), SDG3 (good health and well-being), SDG6 (clean water and sanitation), SDG13 (climate action), and SDG15 (life of terrestrial ecosystems).

APA

Ruiz, I., & Sanz, M. J. (2019). WHY SUSTAINABLE LAND MANAGEMENT? THE CASE OF THE MEDITERRANEAN BASIN. Basque Centre for Climate Change. https://www.bc3research.org/h6T8Uy8Nm4gFs0O/201911081206491521333038.pdf

Chicago

Ruiz, Itxaso, and María José Sanz. WHY SUSTAINABLE LAND MANAGEMENT? THE CASE OF THE MEDITERRANEAN BASIN. Basque Centre for Climate Change, 2019. https://www.bc3research.org/h6T8Uy8Nm4gFs0O/201911081206491521333038.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Ruiz |first1=Itxaso |last2=Sanz |first2=María José |title=WHY SUSTAINABLE LAND MANAGEMENT? THE CASE OF THE MEDITERRANEAN BASIN |publisher=Basque Centre for Climate Change |date=2019 |url=https://www.bc3research.org/h6T8Uy8Nm4gFs0O/201911081206491521333038.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{ruiz2019why, author = {Ruiz, Itxaso and Sanz, María José}, title = {{WHY SUSTAINABLE LAND MANAGEMENT? THE CASE OF THE MEDITERRANEAN BASIN}}, institution = {Basque Centre for Climate Change}, year = {2019}, url = {https://www.bc3research.org/h6T8Uy8Nm4gFs0O/201911081206491521333038.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }