Using the Sustainable Development Goals to address unsustainable land transformations in the Asia-Pacific region

Key messages
- Inherent complexity in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a barrier to their application to land management. A better conceptual understanding can guide governments and other actors in the Asia-Pacific region to develop a coherent view of how the SDGs apply to land.
- Reorganisation of the SDGs and their targets related to land into meaningful groupings can be useful for understanding how the SDGs can help to guide sustainable land management.
- To address unsustainable land transformation, strategies that promote harmony between nature and people are needed. The interdependent concepts of natural capital and inclusive human wellbeing are proposed to guide the development of such strategies within the framework of socio-ecological systems (SES).
- Sustainable land management depends on synergistic interactions between three pillars – governance, natural capital and inclusive wellbeing – within a SES. The SDGs, as a compilation of targets and indicators, can help in assessing progress on achieving these synergies.