The Executive Secretary of the UNCCD, MR. Luc Gnacadja, calls on world leaders to promote effective land use methods to mitigate drought and combat land degradation. Land is generating life-supplying biological productivity and its productive area is a very limited part of it.

At present it is estimated that some 30 percent of the globe's land surface is somehow suitable for agriculture; however, around 70 percent of this area would suffer one or more soil and terrain constraints, leaving only 12-14 percent of real arable land.

The important notion to derive from this however is that the productive surface of the globe represents a finite area and resource which indeed needs to be used with extreme caution in order to keep its productive potential. Feeding the expected 9 billion people by 2050 will need this resource in its best possible state.

Aware of this need, and ahead of the RIO+20, the UNCCD aims at setting sustainable development goals on land use by launching the challenging target of achieving zero net land degradation until 2030, and drought policies being implemented by 2020. Soils are the most significant non-renewable resource within the bio-productive land system for ensuring water, energy and food security for present and future generations.

Adapted landuse can build resilience to climatic shocks and changing occurrence of extreme events, such as drought. Hence land and soil protection and drought monitoring and forecasting need to be built into policy strategies to be able to reach these targets.

The recognition of the needs to protect soils and the raised awareness on its importance is confirmed by several international initiatives launched in the last years, such as the Global Soil Partnership, the Global Soil Forum, and the Global Soil Map.

This revitalized interest can be deduced also from the more and more frequent appearance of soil related issues in the media. The example of the growing interest on “land take” and “soil sealing”, within the civil society and among the citizens, is a clear demonstration of a change in the perception of the value of land and soil: from private goods to global resource.

It is now necessary that this increased awareness on soil is reflected by an increased priority of soil protection within the policy agenda, at international, national and local scale. It will be necessary to consider in this process the new and emerging threats on soil and on land, such as the problems deriving from biofuel crops to the decline in soil biodiversity. Strengthening the knowledge on soil, as stated in the second pillar of the Global Soil Partnership, is also a necessary step for the achievement of an effective soil protection.

The complex interactions of bio-physical and socio-economic processes that lead to land degradation, as well as the options for mitigation, are more and more understood and scientific knowledge increased rapidly during the last 15 years.

Land degradation has very local characteristics but now we know that these are thematically very similar over the globe and repeatable global assessment methods are being devised. Efforts made by all partners in EUROCLIMA are helping to build these methods.

To capture this progress and address the increased interest and awareness for land degradation both at scientific and decision making levels, the JRC is coordinating, in collaboration with many partners globally, including EUROCLIMA, the compilation of a new World Atlas of Desertification.

This atlas, including a web based information system, builds on new concepts to tackle the challenges of scale and aims at illustrating the status of integrated assessment. The EUROCLIMA programme contributes to the monitoring and assessment of the status and trends of land and soil degradation in Latin America by inventorying useful existing data layers and by developing satellite based products to assess the long term evolution of the ecosystem dynamics and the possible impact of crucial land use transitions.This information will be made available as Soil Atlas for Latin America and as interactive web based server for data layers and integrated products’ on land degradation and drought.

Looking farther ahead, Rio + 20 can set and implement the definitions of concrete and reachable targets on land and soil protection and drought policies. The land, soil and drought activities within EUROCLIMA definitely are geared to contribute to make this happen so our next generations will appreciate and benefit from our efforts in the fight to preserve the planet.