The world's soils are rapidly deteriorating due to soil erosion, nutrient depletion, loss of soil organic carbon, soil sealing and other threats, but this trend can be reversed provided countries take the lead in promoting sustainable management practices and the use of appropriate technologies, according to a new UN report released.

This report gives a Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) and carbon footprint analysis on a selection of industrial bamboo products. The LCA is made for cradle-to-gate, plus the end-of-life stages of the bamboo products.

Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, conservation of forest carbon stocks, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries (REDD+) is intrinsically a multilevel process that cuts across different land-use based sector ministries.

This volume deals with land degradation, which is occurring in almost all terrestrial biomes and agro-ecologies, in both low and high income countries and is stretching to about 30% of the total global land area. About three billion people reside in these degraded lands.

The Summary for Policymakers (SPM) identifies good practice policies, initiatives and actions that could be scaled up and replicated by Parties to realize significant mitigation potential in the pre-2020 period.