In November 2024, Mongolia’s national Land Degration Neutrality (LDN) Task Force launched its “HowtoLDN” roadmap, supported by the GEO-LDN Flagship. Facing over 75 % land degradation, Mongolia used Trends.Earth (the UNCCD-endorsed cloud tool) to map degradation hotspots and track progress. By Q1 2025, this data-driven approach informed targeted rangeland restoration projects in six provinces—yielding an estimated 9 USD return per dollar invested—and established the first national monitoring dashboard for SDG 15.3.1 compliance.

Prerequisites:

• Access to EO data

• Capability to process, integrate and analyse EO data

Cost:

• Ballpark: USD 0.5–5M + USD 100–500k/yr

• Includes: project design and management, procurement of data (free or commercial), analytics development, integration with government workflows, training and capacity building, monitoring and evaluation, maintenance and support

Timeframe:

• Overall: 12–36 mo

• Phase: scoping & stakeholder engagement (3–6 mo), pilot design & setup (3–6 mo), implementation & testing (6–18 mo), evaluation & scale-up preparation (6–12 mo)

Pros:

• Improved Decision Making - Enables informed decision-making by identifying areas that require investment and improvement

• Increased Resilience and Efficiency - Improves allocation of resources while improving recovery after disruption

• Cost Effectiveness - By mutualizing needs, it improves allocation of financial resources, maximizing impact while minimizing waste

• Fomenting Development - By stimulating the local building of capabilities

• Fosters Independence - Limits the need to rely on external entities for the provision of services derived from space downstream capabilities

Considerations:

• Dependency - Reliant on external providers

• Complex - Potential integration and coordination issues

• Investment-Intensity - Can require significant investment

• Need for Expertise - Requires high levels of expertise and coordination