Because desertification has brought poverty, famine, and displacement, hindering the improvement of eco-environment and social-economy in the developing countries and regions, it has attracted the attention of the whole world.
Since 1994, when the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) was established, all kinds of battles against desertification have been conducted worldwide with hopes to bring about a positive change.
Nevertheless, a large number of questions concerning desertification still remain, depending on the different contexts and objectives of national strategies. The large gap between sciences and policies concerning the rehabilitation of the desertified land requires urgent attention in many countries. To design effective land restoration and rehabilitation strategies and achieve the global goals for sustainable development, including Land Degradation Neutrality, a systemic and comprehensive understanding of desertification and rehabilitation is necessary. Following a brief conceptual overview and an introduction to the context and planning of Chinese national investments in land rehabilitation, this Editorial introduces fifteen collected contributions to this debate from interested scientists in China.
Due to the scale of the land degradation, desertification and drought challenges in China, it accounts for a large portion of the total area of degraded land globally. The achievement of the global target for land degradation neutrality and the objectives of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration will depend on significant progress to be made in China. The Chinese Government is investing heavily in the achievement of its ecological objectives, and reporting substantial achievements. For example, from 2015 to 2018, the net area of land restored in China was calculated to account for about one fifth of the global total. On this basis, the 2021 Chinese Voluntary National Review stated that China had restored more land than any other country. The role of Chinese scientists, and their commentaries on this achievement should therefore be of considerable interest to the international-science-policy community.
According to the UNCCD, “desertification” means land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities; “land” means the terrestrial bio-productive system (that comprises soil, vegetation, other biota, and the ecological and hydrological processes that operate within the system); and “land degradation” means reduction or loss of the biological or economic productivity and complexity in that terrestrial system. More recently, the millennium ecosystem assessment has defined measures of productivity (or loss of productivity) in terms of ecosystem services. The Paris Agreement has captured emerging understanding of the complexity of food-related aspects of the terrestrial system.
Rehabilitation–management actions that aim to reinstate a level of ecosystem functioning on degraded sites, where the goal is renewed and ongoing provision of ecosystem services rather than the biodiversity and integrity of a designated native reference ecosystem.
Furthermore, rehabilitation is more in line with the immediate aspirations of the public and decision-makers. Globally, it appears that there will be some challenges to be faced over the coming years in order for policy-makers to be able to monitor and report successes achieved in relation to land restoration targets. Rehabilitation is more feasible to monitor than restoration. This can be done in terms of emerging economic environmental accounts that capture the stocks and flows of ecosystem services of value to the human population, including provisioning services and selected supporting and regulating services that are measurable in many parts of the developing world through the emerging systems for water accounting alongside other aspects of natural capital accounting .
A range of case studies of successful rehabilitation are available from the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, whereas the case studies of success in restoration were fewer.
Guest Editorial