Thinking outside the plot: addressing low adoption of sustainable land management in sub-Saharan Africa

• Sustainable land management (SLM) can act against land degradation.
• Ecological, social and economic factors constrain adoption of SLM.
• Approaches to SLM need to be flexible and tailored to local settings.
• The landscape approach offers new opportunities for incentivising SLM.
• Transdiciplinarity is vital to devise solutions which balance multiple objectives.

Sustainable land management (SLM) is seen as the best way to combat and even reverse land degradation. Despite extensive past efforts to promote SLM to smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, adoption remains low. Research suggests that this is largely the result of social and economic drivers of land degradation which can vary from household to regional levels. We argue that to get a better understanding of these drivers, and to incorporate them into planning and implementation, a landscape approach that pays close attention to ecosystem services and livelihoods on a broader scale is necessary. Incorporating this wider lens calls for a transdisciplinary approach that brings together multiple perspectives into a common frame.