Desertification: China provides a solution to a global challenge

Abstract

Desertification has been caused by various factors and is a major environmental problem and development bottleneck faced by the world. It is also a serious threat to ecological security and to sustainable economic and social development. As a stubborn world problem, focused on by the United Nations 2030 sustainable development goal 15.3, China aims to combat desertification by implementing the “eight-column four-beam” strategy, and also suggest the “four-medicine” approach for global desertification governance. This includes the development of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification protocol, unified global compliance and compliance metrics; building a global observation network, and monitoring land changes based on remote sense; preparing the global natural desert (heritage) list, leaving the original deserts for future generations; initiating the global action of combating desertification, and striving to achieve a land degradation-neutral world by 2030.

Keywords

desertification / global governance / land degradation neutrality / LDN / origin / status / strategy / sustainable development

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to members of the Institute of Desertification Studies, Chinese Academy of Forestry, and Youlin Yang from UNCCD and Pak Son Low from Bond University, Australia, who have contributed to the studies mentioned in the review. This article is part of an International Cooperation in Science and Technology project of the Ministry of Science and Technology (2015DFR31130), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31600581), a Forestry Soft Science Research Project of the State Forestry Administration (2016-R22), Research on the Present, Problems and Countermeasures of UNCCD Implementation Mechanism Project of State Forestry Administration, and a Henan Provincial Cooperation Project (No.68).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Yingshuang Bao, Leilei Cheng, Yanfeng Bao, Liu Yang, Lina Jiang, Chao Long, Zhe Kong, Peng Peng, Jun Xiao, and Qi Lu declare they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose.

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2017. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)