Sustainable Land Management and Land Degradation Neutrality

Abstract The active development of the concept of sustainable land management (SLM) is inextricably linked with approaches to land degradation neutrality (LDN). It is considered that so-called good land management practices make it possible to prevent or reduce the risk of land degradation and reverse it while maintaining the productivity potential and ecosystem functions. Based on analysis of the correspondence of good practices to SLM parameters and the hierarchy and typology of land management developed on this basis (with the categories of practice, model, type, class), it is shown that individual practices and technologies do not always lead to the achievement of land degradation neutrality and, conversely, it is not always achieved by sustainable land management approach. SLM modeling using qualitative rating scales and radar charts has shown high effectiveness in visualizing the integrity of models and adjusting them to achieve the best result. An improved typology is proposed with three main classes of land management: simple, supported, and expanded. Particular attention is paid to the other forms class, which includes natural functioning, long-term abandonment of land, and destructive land management. An algorithm scheme to recognize sustainable land management in the case of land degradation is proposed, as is an inverse algorithm to achieve land degradation for different land management models. A hypothesis has been put forward about the landscape‒ecological framework of SLM, which makes it possible to explain the causes of the discrepancy between the estimates of LDN for objects of different scales: achieving land degradation neutrality in a certain territory is possible not so much by continuous coverage of this territory with good SLM practices as by preserving the framework of SLM models, types, and classes.