Abstract Land degradation is occurring in almost all terrestrial biomes and agro-ecologies, in both low and high income countries. However its impact is especially severe on the livelihoods of the poor who heavily depend on natural resources. Despite the severe impact of land degradation on the poor and the crucial role that land plays in human welfare and development, investments in sustainable land management (SLM) are low, especially in developing countries. This chapter summarizes the results from global and regional levels as well as 12 case study countries. The chapter also draws conclusions and implications for taking action against land degradation. Land degradation stretches to about 30 % of the total global land area and about three billion people reside in degraded lands. The annual global cost of land degradation due to land use/cover change (LUCC) and using land degrading management practices on static cropland and grazing land is about 300 billion USD. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) accounts for the largest share (22 %) of the total global cost of land degradation. Only about 46 % of the cost of land degradation due to LUCC—which accounts for 78 % of the US$300 billion loss— is borne by land users and the remaining share (54 %) is borne by consumers of ecosystem services off the farm. This further illustrates that land degradation is a global problem even though its impact is much greater on poor land users. The cost of taking action against land degradation is much lower than the cost of inaction and the returns to taking action are high. On average, one US dollar investment into restoration of degraded land returns five US dollars.