Sustainable grazing land management to protect ecosystem services

Sustainable grazing land management (SGLM) is crucial to prevent land degradation and support food security and human well-being and may contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation. To facilitate a wide-scale adoption of SGLM, further quantification of its multiple impacts and tradeoffs between ecosystem services is needed. The objective of this study was to assess the potential of SGLM measures to protect ecosystem services and contribute to sustainable development, based on an evaluation of 30 SGLM technologies in semi-arid regions documented in the World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies (WOCAT) and an additional narrative literature review. We first analyzed (i) environmental characteristics and conditions, (ii) costs and benefits, and (iii) socioeconomic and environmental impacts of SGLM. Based on this analysis, we disentangle how SGLM affects ecosystem services and contributes to a sustainable development. The results show that SGLM represents a wide range of practices either aimed at (1) increasing the carrying capacity by improving the soil quality and the amount and type of vegetation or (2) preventing overgrazing by reducing animal pressure. The positive impacts of SGLM directly contribute to crucial provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural ecosystem services. On the other hand, while the management costs related to implementing SGLM are usually made by the landowners, many off-site impacts benefit wider society, indicating the need for political support and regulation. We recommend a large-scale implementation of SGLM as an effective means to deal with environmental challenges like desertification, soil degradation, loss of biodiversity, and climate change mitigation and adaptation.