India to Restore 2.6 Crore Hectares of Degraded Land by 2030

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Recently, a High-Level Segment Meeting of the 14^th Conference of Parties (COP14) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), was held.

Key Points of Meeting

• India reaffirmed its commitment to addressing all the three main concerns of the Rio Conventions:
  • Climate change
  • Biodiversity
  • Land degradation
• India intends to raise its ambition of the total area that would be restored from its land degradation status, from twenty-one million hectares to twenty-six million hectares between now and 2030. 
• Major emphasis on:
  • restoring land productivity and ecosystem services of 26 million hectares of most degraded and vulnerable land, 
  • degraded agricultural, forest and other wastelands by adopting a landscape restoration approach.
• India proposed to setup a global technical support institute for the member countries of the UNCCD for their capacity building and support regarding the Land Degradation Neutrality Target Setting Program
• Degraded lands and water scarcity go hand in hand. Leadership of UNCCD, was applauded, to conceive a global water action agenda which is central to the Land Degradation Neutrality strategy.
• Eradicate the menace of single use plastic.
• The Delhi Declaration will be released. 
  • The Delhi Declaration of 2019 called for better access and stewardship over land, and emphasised gender-sensitive transformative projects.
  • Due to this, around 3 million hectares of forest cover have been added in the last decade, enhancing the combined forest cover to almost one-fourth of the country’s total area.
• A Centre of Excellence is being set up in India to promote a scientific approach towards land degradation issues.

Reasons for Land Degradation

• Loss of Fertility by Mismanagement: Due to the use of various scientific inputs like irrigation, fertilisers, pesticides etc. Unscientific cropping practices are also causing harm. This results in problems like soil erosion, loss of natural nutrients, water-logging and salinity and contamination of ground and surface water.
• Soil Erosion: This is the process by which the top soil is detached from land and either washed away by water, ice or sea waves or blown away by wind. An area of around 8C mHa is exposed to the threat of soil erosion, while 43 mHa is actually affected.
• Salinity/Alkalinity: This problem occurs in areas of temporary water surplus and high temperatures due to over-irrigation or high rainfall. The salt layer plays havoc with the fertility of topsoil and renders vast stretches of useful land infertile. This problem is particularly serious in areas with assured irrigation in Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, western Maharashtra, Bihar and northern Rajasthan (the Indira Gandhi Canal command area). Such lands are known by local names, such as reh, kallar, usar, chopan etc. 
• Waterlogging: This happens when the water table gets saturated for various reasons—over- irrigation, seepage from canals, inadequate drainage or presence of a hard pan below. The land under waterlogged conditions can be used neither for agriculture nor for human settlements. This menace can be tackled by adopting scientific norms for the amount of irrigation, checking seepage from canals by proper lining and providing adequate drainage through field channels.
• Floods and Droughts: Both these hazards have the harmful effect of limiting the use of good soil. 
• Desertification: It is also the end result of Land Degradation but it could also be the reason. Advancement of sand from the desert to the adjoining regions is called desertification. The sand covers fertile soil and affects its fertility. This problem is particularly serious in areas adjoining the Thar desert in Rajasthan. 

Measures to Check Land Degradation

• Improved agricultural practices: Better practices need to be adopted in different regions. Tillage on higher slopes should be avoided, while contour ploughing on the slopes prone to erosion may help in maintaining the soil depth.
• Shelterbelts: Planting of shelterbelts and stubble mulching help in conserving the soils in desert regions. 
• Avoid overgrazing: The pressure of livestock on pastures in hilly, desert and plateau regions has to be reduced in order to avoid overgrazing, such as in Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Karnataka.
• Prevent Ravines: The ravines and gullies should be plugged to prevent head-ward erosion. 
• Land Degradation Neutrality: 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 within specified temporal and spatial scales and ecosystems.

Image Courtesy: SDG

United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) 

• Established in 1994, came into force in 1996.
• India ratified in 1996
• UNCCD is the sole legally binding international agreement linking environment and development to sustainable land management. 
• The Convention addresses specifically the arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas, known as the drylands, where some of the most vulnerable ecosystems and peoples can be found.
• The new UNCCD 2018-2030 Strategic Framework is the most comprehensive global commitment to achieve Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) in order to restore the productivity of vast expanses of degraded land, improve the livelihoods of more than 1.3 billion people, and reduce the impacts of drought on vulnerable populations to build. 
• Focus on: 
  • to maintain and restore land and soil productivity, and 
  • to mitigate the effects of drought. 
• The UNCCD is particularly committed to a bottom-up approach, encouraging the participation of local people in combating desertification and land degradation. 
• The UNCCD secretariat facilitates cooperation between developed and developing countries, particularly around knowledge and technology transfer for sustainable land management.
• As the dynamics of land, climate and biodiversity are intimately connected, the UNCCD collaborates closely with the other two Rio Conventions; the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to meet these complex challenges with an integrated approach and the best possible use of natural resources.

(Image Courtesy: http://www.imotforum.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/5993463A-1C59-47C7-88DC-D59A527A0D42.jpeg )

Conclusion

• Restoration of land will not only ensure good soil health, increased land productivity, food security but also improved livelihoods.
• About one-third of the net sown area in India is irrigated. The increasing pressure of population on the arable land will necessitate a higher level of intensification of agriculture with the help of adequate inputs of irrigation, high yielding varieties of seeds and intensive use of fertilisers.
• The agreements reached about how to restore, protect and manage the land on a massive scale and how to include private sector partnerships can immediately strengthen action plans for all the stakeholders.

Sources: IE