Why restoring degraded land is critical for India

It will help provide livelihoods, tackle climate change, and protect infrastructure

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said that India will restore 26 million hectares (ha) of degraded land by 2030, taking up the target by five million ha from the current 21 million ha. He was speaking at the ongoing 14th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (COP14 UNCCD) being hosted by India. Of the 196 countries that are party to the UNCCD, 122, including India, have agreed to become land degradation neutral --- a state whereby the amount and quality of land resources, necessary to support ecosystem functions and services and enhance food security, remains stable or increases ---- by 2030, as specified in the Sustainable Development Goal targets.

To understand why Mr Modi’s plan to restore land is critical, one needs to understand the current situation, and the impact degradation can have on the poor and the country.

According to the Indian Space Research Organisation’s land atlas 2016, about 96 million hectares, or 29.23%, of India’s land area is undergoing degradation. This is caused by multiple forces, deforestation, wetland drainage, overgrazing, unsustainable land-use practices, and the expansion of agricultural, industrial and urban areas, and now climate change. This process needs to be reversed because degraded land loses the ability to support plant life, and provide ecosystem services such as management of water systems and storage of carbon dioxide, one of the six main greenhouse gases.

Second, India spends a huge amount of money on developing infrastructure, which then people use to exploit to gain new social and economic opportunities. But these enablers --- such as roads and bridges --- are often destroyed by rampaging floodwaters and excessive rainfall ---- both linked to climate change. So if India wants to protect its crucial investments, it needs to tackle climate, and reversing land degradation of a sure-shot way of doing it.

Third, tackling land degradation will improve livelihood opportunities of 60% of India’s population that depends on agriculture and related activities. For successive governments, poverty alleviation has been a key agenda. And that goal will not succeed if two basic units of livelihood ---- land and water ----- are not taken cared for by the government --- and the people.

Source: 10/09/2019

If it is not tackled in time, land degradation can trigger conflict

The government must take the warning on desertification seriously because land has synergistic benefits for biodiversity and creating carbon sink

The 14th session of the Conference of Parties (COP14) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification began in New Delhi on Monday. The meeting, which is being attended by 196 countries, will discuss several global challenges, including drought, land tenure, ecosystem restoration, climate change, health and sand and dust storms among others. The COP 14 comes at a critical time for the world. In August, an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report on climate change and land said the land surface temperature has increased by 1.53 degree C since the pre-industrial period, and called for addressing land degradation to help mitigate climate change because of large reserves of carbon in the soil.

Out of the 196 participating nations, 122 countries, including India, have agreed to become land degradation neutral (LDN) by 2030. But this will not be easy. Nearly 30% of India’s land area has been degraded through deforestation, over-cultivation, soil erosion and depletion of wetlands, says a 2016 study by Space Applications Centre of the Indian Space Research Organisation. The annual economic loss due to degraded land and change in land use in India was valued at Rs 3.17 lakh crore ($46.90 billion) in 2014-15, which was 2.5% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2014-15, according to a 2018 study done by The Energy and Resource Institute (TERI), a Delhi-based think tank. The government needs to speed up reclamation as the cost of land degradation will outstrip the cost of reclamation in 2030, the report warned.

But at a time when India needs to take up the anti-desertification drive, there seems to be some doubt about India’s LDN target. On August 27, environment minister Prakash Javadekar quoted a lower LDN target (5 million hectares) when the original target was 30 million hectares. The Indian government must take the warning on desertification seriously because land, as Indian Institute of Science’s N H Ravindranath told Hindustan Times, has synergistic benefits for biodiversity and creating carbon sinks. Additionally, loss of land will lead to reduced agricultural output and spark a water crisis. However, what must worry the government more is the strong link that exists between desertification and the creation of a number of social and economic stressors. Populations that lack resiliency to these stressors — who usually happen to be poor — may choose to migrate, seek other means of production or become dependent on others for subsistence. These responses to a worsening environment, experts warn, can make social-political conflict more likely.

Source: Hindustan Times, 2/09/2019