Improving the enabling environment to combat land degradation: institutional, financial, legal and science-policy challenges and solutions

The need to mainstream land degradation issues into national policies and frameworks is encouraged by international mechanisms such as the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs, 2000). However, main-streaming has faced a number of interrelated institutional, financial, legal, knowledge andpolicy barriers.As such, despite 15years of existence of theUNCCD, successes in reversingand/orpreventing landdegradationarewidelyperceived tobe limited.Thispaperhighlights thenatureof these barriers tomainstreaming and identifiesways inwhich specific limitations that hampermainstreaming of land degradation into national, regional and international activities andpoliciesmaybeovercome. It also identifies institutional infrastructures throughwhich scientificfindingsmaymore effectively enter policy, suggesting that scientific bodies are required to strategise, coordinate and stimulate the global scientific research community to supportmainstreamingand theup-scalingof efforts to combat landdegradation.Sucha scientificbodycould also stimulate national cross-sectoral and multi-stakeholder knowledge exchange. The paper then moves to the national level to examine mainstreaming processes in Namibia, a country particularly advanced in taking amore integrated approach. Although the Namibia case study shows an impressive degree o