2.2 Stakeholder perceptions of land degradation
A survey of the stakeholder perceptions was performed to understand the current policies involving aspects of land degradations focused on knowledge gaps, failure in policy implementation, and institutional responsibilities and their role in the process under the post-conflict environment. A total of 60 relevant stakeholders, inclucing state, entity and local land related policy and decision makers, farmers, private forest owners, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), scientists and public companies were interviwed (Table 1) . The structure of stakeholders is defined based on the level at which decisions are made, and involvement in decision making at three levels: state, entity and local. The stakeholders were grouped in three classes: (i)decision makers , including people who design and implement land related policy framework on the state, entity and local level of decision making; (ii) land owners/users , those individuals and institutions who directly influence soil health by applying different practices, such as farmers and private forest owners; and (iii) non-governmental institutions , including people from universities, institutes and NGOs who are aware about land degradation problems in BIH.
The survey was based on oral questionnaires, focused on the perception of stakeholders on legislative and institutional frameworks related to land degradation, having in mind the post-conflict perspective of BIH. Interviews were designed in order to gather relevant information from institutions and representatives responsible for soil and land, and land owners/users. The interviewed were questioned on their perception of land degradation and its drivers, soil policy frameworks and their challenges, their willing to participate in policy design, and personal benefit of incentives for SLM. Another question was the legal status of the interviewed, if they were refugees from another entity during the Civil War, in order to infer the about the influence of post conflict environment on their atitude toward policy framework. Further details on the questionair are provided in the Supplementary material. Interviews were conducted online through a google questionnarie, and some of them (for land owners/users) were taken personally. Questionnaries were distributed from July to November 2019.