"Sustainable Land Management is the use of land resources, including soils, water, animals and plants, for the production of goods to meet changing human needs, while simultaneously ensuring the long-term productive potential of these resources and the maintenance of their environmental functions". (UN RIO Summit, 1992)
The SLM Progress Calculator is an adaptation of the methodology under WOCAT Questionnaire Mapping. The SLM PC was created through the GEF5 SLM Project of the United Nations Development Programme in South Africa, in partnership with the Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries and the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development. The SLM PC has been a project effort with inputs from our implementation partners at the CSIR, Endangered Wildlife Trust and Rhodes University.
To gain a broad overview of the level of implementation to achieve SLM outcomes at project landscape level
To measure the progress towards SLM through using a simple scoring system of 1-5
Use results from a participatory assessment as evidence for reflection, learning, adaptive management and feedbacks
Communicate results, impacts and progress to project committees and donors to better understand when land is "under improved SLM"
Through being required to measure progress toward achieving hectares under sustainable land management as a main project indicator, the team has struggled to define what is considered to be under sustainable land management as simply a measure of biophysical improvement. Furthermore, with the impact of drought on already fragile semiarid systems, noticeable improvements in landscapes may not be so easy to measure. Therefore, to measure the trajectory towards improved sustainable land management that sufficiently accounts for human needs, capacity and behaviour was seen as important to incorporate into our efforts of measuring our progress towards more sustainable landscapes.
GUIDELINE TO USING THE SUSTAINABLE LAND MANAGEMENT PROGRESS CALCULATOR (SLM PC)