What is Sustainable Land Management

Sustainable Land Management (SLM): This approach aims to integrate land use, increased production, and environmental protection. SLM aims not only to increase production but also to maintain soil fertility and maintain a healthy and sustainable natural environment.

Sustainable land management comprises a wide range of methods and practices in agriculture, forestry, water management, and nature conservation. These include fertilization, irrigation, soil conservation techniques, biodiversity conservation, sustainable agricultural practices, forest management, soil restoration, erosion control, water resource conservation, and increased energy and material efficiency.

Land Degradation: Land degradation is defined as any reduction or loss of biological and economic productive capacity of land due to human activities, exacerbated by natural processes, and whose extent is often increased by climate change and biodiversity loss (UNCCD, 2013).

Land degradation means reduction or loss, in arid, semi-arid and dry subhumid areas, of the biological or economic productivity and complexity of rainfed cropland, irrigated cropland or range, pasture, forest and woodlands resulting from land uses or from a process or combination of processes, including processes arising from human activities and habitation patterns such as: soil erosion caused by wind and/or water; deterioration of the physical, chemical and biological or economic properties of soil; and long-term loss of natural vegetation (UNCCD, 1993).

Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN): It is a state whereby the amount and quality of land resources necessary to support ecosystem function and services and enhance food security remain stable or increase within specified temporal and spatial scales and ecosystems (UNCDD, 1993).

In line with the global goals of eradicating poverty, protecting our planet and ensuring that all people live in peace and prosperity, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), prepared with the principle of “leaving no one behind,” were adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015.

Among these goals, Goal 15 – Terrestrial Life – concerns the protection, restoration and sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems. This goal, to be achieved by 2030, encompasses sustainable forest management, combating desertification, halting and reversing land degradation, and preventing biodiversity loss.

Sub-target 15.3, one of the 12 sub-targets identified under Goal 15, is of particular importance in this sense: “Achieving a Land Degradation Neutral World.” This target aims to ensure the protection of natural resources and the sustainability of ecosystem services by reducing the net impact of land degradation to zero.

Integrated Natural Resource Management (INRM): While there is no single, universally accepted definition, INRM is a holistic approach for managing and using natural resources (such as land, water, air, and biodiversity) in a sustainable, efficient, balanced, and multi-stakeholder manner. This approach is a process that considers the biophysical, socio-political, and economic aspects of resource use.

Ecosystem Services: They are all the products and services that ecosystems on Earth provide to humans and other living things (DKM, 2020).

Although the exact number of ecosystem services we benefit from globally remains uncertain, the "Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Report," one of the most important publications on this subject, categorizes the services known to be provided by nature into four groups:

• Provisioning Services
• Regulatory Services
• Supporting Services
• Cultural Services

Micro Basin: These are areas that are divided by a stream, contain unique natural resources, are surrounded by mountains and hills, contain villages of various sizes and numbers and where traditional agricultural activities are carried out.