The Global Database on Sustainable Land Management (SLM) of WOCAT (the World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies) provides free access to the documentation of field-tested SLM practices from different places in the world and offers practitioners the opportunity to share their own SLM practices. Due to its long-term presence and wealth of knowledge, WOCAT’s Database has been officially recognized by the UNCCD as the primary recommended Global Database for SLM best practices.
SLM in the context of WOCAT is defined as the use of land resources - including soil, water, vegetation and animals - to produce goods and provide services to meet human needs, while ensuring the long-term productive potential of these resources and sustaining their environmental functions. A SLM practice can be either an SLM Technology or an SLM Approach.
The objective of documenting and assessing SLM practices is to share and spread valuable knowledge in land management, support evidence-based decision-making and scale up identified good practices, thereby contributing to preventing and reducing land degradation and to restoring degraded land.
