Although land neutrality is a sustainable development objective, it remains largely unknown outside international environmental negotiation circles and dedicated academic circles. For the past 10 years, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification has volunteered to implement this objective in the regions covered by its mandate: arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid zones. A relative appropriation of the notion of neutrality is observed in countries, mainly at national level, with assessments of neutrality at this scale largely based on satellite imagery and expertise. While the question of the role of land governance in achieving neutrality in terms of land degradation has been introduced within the convention as of 2019, detailed and grounded analyses of the links between neutrality and land tenure remain rare, if not absent from the academic world. This briefing note, which aims to better document the relationships between land tenure and neutrality in the Sahelian space, is based on a workshop mobilizing numerous specialists in these fields. It allows us to explore these notions and relate them to different scales of analysis, from global to local.

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