Land neutrality, although a sustainable development goal, remains largely unknown outside of international environmental negotiation circles and academic circles dedicated to the subject.
For the past 10 years, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification has volunteered to implement this goal in the regions under its mandate, namely arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas. A relative appropriation of the concept of neutrality has been observed in the countries, mainly at the national level, with neutrality assessments at this scale largely based on satellite imagery and expertise. While the issue of land governance in achieving land degradation neutrality was introduced within the convention in 2019, in-depth and grounded analyses of the links between neutrality and land tenure remain rare, even absent in academic circles.
This note aims to better document the relationship between land tenure and neutrality in the Sahelian space and explore these concepts, connecting them across different scales of analysis, from global to local. It synthesizes the discussions and conclusions of the workshop dedicated to the land tenure dimension of land degradation neutrality in the Sahelo-Sudanian space, held on September 11, 2023, initiated by the Land Tenure & Development Technical Committee (CTFD), the Pôle foncier de Montpellier, and the CSFD, which brought together numerous specialists in these fields.
The note, available in both French and English, is published in the CTFD collection “Summary Papers”, which highlights the presentations and debates at the study days that CTFD organizes.
