The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), established in 1994, is the sole international agreement linking environmental considerations with the sustainable management of land. In recent times, the UNCCD has launched its first-ever Data Dashboard, offering a collective view of the global land degradation situation. This platform surfaces data from 126 nations, indicating that land degradation is accelerating in all regions at an alarming rate. As part of the 21st session of the UNCCD, which will take place in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, in November 2023, there will be a focus on reviewing the global progress towards achieving Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) and related matters.
Land Degradation Neutrality: A Tool for Sustainability
Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) stands as a potent instrument for ensuring adequate healthy and productive natural resources. By preventing degradation whenever possible and restoring already degraded land, LDN encourages improved land management practices and better land-use planning. These measures help enhance economic, social, and ecological sustainability for present and future generations. With respect to climate change, LDN contributes significantly through mitigation and adaptation strategies. By reversing land degradation, carbon stocks in soils and vegetation can increase, transforming the land from being a source of Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) into a carbon sink.
Assessing the Impact: Insights from UNCCD Data on Land Degradation
Recent reports show that from 2015 to 2019, the world lost over 100 million hectares of productive land annually, twice the size of Greenland, indicating the rapid deterioration of land on a global scale. Regions such as Eastern and Central Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean are experiencing severe degradation, affecting at least 20% of their total land area. Furthermore, in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean, 163 million hectares and 108 million hectares, respectively, have succumbed to land degradation since 2015. Despite these worrying trends, some nations like Botswana and the Dominican Republic have made notable progress in combating land degradation.
Recommendations to Achieve LDN Targets
To meet the LDN targets outlined in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the UNCCD emphasizes the need to restore 1.5 billion hectares of degraded land by 2030. Funding is critical for these restoration efforts and achieving voluntary LDN targets set by various countries for 2030. While global trends may seem alarming, it’s still possible to meet or exceed LDN goals through accelerated restoration efforts and halting further degradation.
Understanding Land Degradation: Causes and Impacts
Land degradation stems from numerous forces, including extreme weather conditions like drought, and human activities that degrade soil quality and land utility. Severe land degradation results in desertification, a process creating arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas. This accelerates Climate Change and biodiversity loss, leading to droughts, wildfires, involuntary migration, and the emergence of Zoonotic Infectious Diseases.
Global and Local Measures to Curb Land Degradation
Worldwide efforts to combat land degradation include initiatives like the Bonn Challenge, aiming to restore 150 million hectares of deforested and degraded land by 2020, and 350 million hectares by 2030, and the Great Green Wall initiative by the Global Environment Facility (GEF). India, too, has taken significant steps towards this cause with programs such as Integrated Watershed Management Programme (IWMP), Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), Soil Conservation in the Catchment of River Valley Project, National Watershed Development Project for Rainfed Areas (NWDPRA) and Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas by ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation).
The Role of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)
The UNCCD focuses specifically on drylands—arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas—home to vulnerable ecosystems and peoples. The convention’s member nations collaborate to improve living conditions in drylands, restore land and soil productivity, and mitigate drought effects. The UNCCD, along with Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), addresses interlinked challenges of land, climate, and biodiversity. The UNCCD’s 2018-2030 Strategic Framework is a comprehensive global commitment to achieve LDN, aimed at restoring the productivity of vast expanses of degraded land, improving livelihoods of over 1.3 billion people, and reducing impacts of drought on vulnerable populations.
