Introduction
Adopted in 2015 as a part of the SDG Target 15.3, Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) is a relatively new but rapidly evolving concept recommended to the countries to assess, plan and monitor the progress towards achieving no net loss of healthy land. The concept is supported by internationally accepted methodology (Cowie et al. 2018; Orr et al. 2017) and is embedded in the UNCCD national reporting. Nevertheless, it is largely based on a theoretical framework and fragmented experience on how to operationalize LDN. Practical experience in a number of countries demonstrates conventional national peculiarities important for successful LDN targeting. For example, in South Africa the biome level or landscape process based targets (bush encroachment, alien plant species removal) are more appropriate than location specific targets. The spatial location and extent of degradation differ substantially from the three global indicators suggested for LDN target setting (von Maltitz et al. 2019). For Nigeria it is indicated (Ifejika Speranza, Adenle, and Boillat 2019) that “current institutional arrangements are largely unconducive and incoherent for operationalizing LDN”; land pollution and gully erosion are suggested as further relevant indicators for LDN. In Germany (Wunder and Bodle 2019) it is proposed to develop a “concept for a new LDN indicator, which uses land use categories as a possible proxy to differentiate likely impacts on soil. Each land use category is assigned a certain soil value that represents the exposure to soil threats”. (Verburg et al. 2019) demonstrate the lack of LDN integration into national land use plans as well as little consideration for land governance and land tenure issues.
In Russia the impetus for the LDN concept development was two main projects, and the authors of this work were directly involved in: the UNCCD LDN target setting programme (2016-2017) and the Project of Russian Science Foundation (RSF) ”The development of the novel concept of land degradation neutrality to assess the effectiveness of the approaches for sustainable land use and climate change adaptation” (2018-2020). The concept development was supported by the Scientific Coordination Center for Combating Desertification of the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of sciences through data collection for three National reports (National report 2018, 2019, 2021) devoted to land degradation, desertification and drought respectively, and for the national communications within the UNCCD PRAIS2 (2014-2015) and PRAIS3 (2017-2018) reporting cycles.
Russia (1/8 of earth’s land) is a country with high natural diversity, and its experience can be important both at a global and national level. More than one hundred LDN-related scientific works have been published so far in Russian national publications, yet their results, as well as the results of two conferences (Practical Geography, 2018) and (Land Degradation and Desertification, 2020) are not readily available at the international level. Therefore, this paper aims to review the results obtained and consider the directions for their development.