There is an enormous stress on livelihood analysis of rural communities and their economies. Village common property resources (CPRs) have played a substantial economic role for the sustenance in rural areas of the drylands. The CPRs of drylands of western Rajasthan shows a varied range of habitats due to strong functional disparities in topographic, geomorphological, climatic, edaphic and physiographic characteristics. The situation is aggravated due to severe biotic pressure on local ecosystem exists due to overgrazing and anthropogenic activities. There is an interplay between rural communities and their dependency for livelihood on the CPRs. It is a well-known fact that CPRs, more or less, act as a village ecosystem service provider in the life and economy of the rural communities of the drylands of India. The main objective of the present study is to make an evaluation of the role of CPRs as a village ecosystem, emphasizing its functioning as a service provider and the socio-economic repercussions of its degradation or loss. It has been revealed that CPRs have played a very important part in the economy of the surveyed villages and the reliance of landless, marginal and small households has remained much higher and critical for their subsistence. There is an urgent need for the sustainable management of CPRs by the village bodies with the active participation of communities. Manuscript profile

It is very easy to view land degradation and desertification as purely biophysical phenomena for which there are neat technological solutions. Yet millions of real people live in the affected lands, and they both cause land degradation and are impacted by it, so scientists and land managers need to find a good balance between reductionist rigor and societal applicability. The concept of Land Degradation Neutral World (LDN) offered great promise to meet the commitments made in the various National Action Plans as a road map for achieving goals for the affected country reports to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). The operationalization of LDN is more challenging. We must recognize the consequences of past inaction on land degradation, climate change and biodiversity loss. Land degradation plays a key role in this ‘vicious triangle’ of threats to our sustainability. The LDN agenda provides a framework, and commitment to it by all nations affected by land degradation, is the key to successful outcomes by 2030. Adoption of the idea and implementation of measures could lead to reaching LDN, one of the UN’s sustainable development goals that was agreed in 2015, but it won’t be easy and there is an obligation for the richer nations to provide financial and technical support to affected party countries. Manuscript profile