Sustainable land management (SLM) requires the integration of technologies, policies and activities in the rural sector, particularly agriculture, in such a way as to enhance economic performance while maintaining the quality and environmental functions of the natural resource base. Five criteria to evaluate progress towards SLM were identified: productivity, security, protection, viability and acceptability. The definition and pillars are the basic principles and the foundation on which sustainable land management is being developed, and these have been examined and debated by many over the past seven years. Through this process, the concepts of land use resilience and social equity have been added, but otherwise the definition and pillars have stood up to the test. The concept of sustainable land management, like the concept of sustainable development on which it is founded, is gaining momentum in rural as well as in urban constituencies. This is due as much to its psychologic appeal as to the flexibilitiy of the definition. Much progress has been made in identifying criteria and indicators for SLM. To date, international agreement has been achieved on the following land quality indicators: (1) five sets of indicators that can be developed in the short term, ie, nutrient balance, yield trends and variablity, land use intensity, and use diversity and land cover; (2) three sets of indicators, requiring longer-term research, on the themes of soil quality, land degradation and agro-biodiversity; and (3) four sets of indicators that are being developed by other working groups, ie, water quality, forest land quality, rangeland quality and land contamination/pollution. These are the land quality components of SLM and still must be complemented with indicators of the other pillars - economic viability, system resilience, and social equity and acceptability. In these last areas, agreement has been reached only on the indicators: net farm profitability and use of soil conservation practices. Although these are still general themes rather than specific indicators, they provide effective and practical direction on the criteria and requirements for sustainable land management and they channel the research effort. Identifying indicators, however, is only one of several important steps. The next major initiative has to be on procedures to implement SLM at local, national and international levels. Advances in SLM will not be achieved on the basis of technologic and scientific advances alone; changes in institutional and economic structures will also have to be part of the solution. For example, soil conservation technologies and programmes, which were originally designed for rehabilitating degraded areas, must move more into programmes of preventative maintenance; rural land use planning must move away from a prescriptive approach and take on the role of facilitator in order to ensure that the local concerns of farmers and others are given equal hearing with other vested interests. Farmers and other land users are the custodians of rural land resources, and their collective decisions will ultimately determine the sustainability of land use systems.
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