Climate change has strong impacts on soil conservation and agricultural productivity, with severe consequences on smallholders in developing countries, but virtually no research has been carried out so far on this issue. Therefore, it is necessary to foster the implementation of participatory projects to help communities deal with new difficulties. Sustainable soil management can reduce and even reverse land degradation, helping farmers to adapt to climate change effects.

Land desertification is a global environmental problem, leading to the deterioration of the ecological environment and is an issue that threatens humans. Hongsibu, located in Ningxia, northwest China, is a semi-desert area with the largest domestic single-site ecological resettlement area for poverty alleviation based on the wine industry. Here, we quantified the value of the ecosystem services of the wine industry in Hongsibu and used the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to quantitatively evaluate the comprehensive benefits of the wine industry for resolving desertification.

The Maloti-Drakensberg (MD) is the largest and highest-elevation mountain system in southern Africa. Covering 40,000 km2 and reaching 3500 m, the MD provides a range of ecosystem services (ES) to the entire southern African region—benefitting diverse users and extending well beyond the mountains. Rapid socioecological change threatens the provision of ES and presents multidimensional challenges to sustainable development. However, the continued land degradation and persisting socioeconomic problems indicate that development policy has not been effective in tackling these issues.