The land degradation assessment took three years and more than leading experts from 45 countries. Rapid expansion and unsustainable management of croplands and grazing lands is the main driver of land degradation, causing significant loss of biodiversity and impacting food security, water purification, the provision of energy, and other contributions of nature essential to people.
Wetlands have been hit hardest, with 87 percent lost globally in the last years. Some 54 percent have been lost since Wetlands continue to be destroyed in Southeast Asia and the Congo region of Africa, mainly to plant oil palm.
Underlying drivers of land degradation, says the report, are the high-consumption lifestyles in the most developed economies, combined with rising consumption in developing and emerging economies. High and rising per capita consumption, amplified by continued population growth in many parts of the world, are driving unsustainable levels of agricultural expansion, natural resource and mineral extraction, and urbanization.
Land degradation is rarely considered an urgent issue by most governments, even though many have signed an international agreement to reach land degradation neutrality by Deforestation alone accounts for 10 percent of all human-induced emissions. For developing regions like parts of Asia and Africa, the cost of inaction in the face of land degradation is at least three times higher than the cost of action. And the benefits of restoration are 10 times higher than the costs, the report found.
Ending production subsidies in agriculture, fisheries, energy, and other sectors would go a long way to reducing pressure on nature. Roughly 25 percent of Africa has shifted out of cattle and sheep production simply because it has become too dry and unproductive to be profitable, said Robert Scholes, a South African ecologist and co-chair of the assessment. Aquaponics is a man-made system of fish and plants. The fish eat and excrete ammonia which is converted into nutrients by bacteria, and the plants absorb the nutrients, which cleans the water.
This is a natural cycle that happens all over the world. Rinesh says, 'Hydroponics uses a lot of water, but aquaponics recycles existing water. It also produces healthier fish and proteins and doesn't have any negative impacts. The organic process uses a fraction of water compared to soil-based farming. It can also be created almost anywhere from a small back garden to a large, industrial farm.
What's more, both fish and plants can be eaten. Scientists like Silvia are trying to find new, natural ways of managing soil to improve its function. Silvia's research explores mycorrhizal associations, or the symbiotic relationship between plant roots and soil fungi.
The fungi help plants extract hard-to-get soil nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen in exchange for sugar. They can also bring additional benefits to their plant hosts and to the environment by increasing plant resistance to drought and pest attacks. They also improve soil structure as well as the plants' carbon storage and retention of nutrients. The global population size is projected to increase from seven billion today to more than nine billion by Crop production has risen dramatically over the past few decades due to intensive agricultural practices, but this has had a huge negative impact on the environment and cannot be sustained.
In fact, agricultural productivity is now declining because of this, posing a major threat to global food security. Altering our eating habits and moving towards a plant-based diet is something we can all do to help make a difference. More policies that protect the environment against unsustainable practices are needed, and individuals can exercise their rights by applying pressure on the government to prioritise this. In the run up to the global UN conferences of COP15 on biodiversity and COP26 on climate change, join us as we debate why and how our relationship with the natural world needs to change.
Get email updates about our news, science, exhibitions, events, products, services and fundraising activities. You must be over the age of Privacy notice. Smart cookie preferences. Change cookie preferences Accept all cookies. Skip to content. Read later. You don't have any saved articles. By Tammana Begum. What does healthy soil look like? The benefits of soil The millions of organisms that live within soil interact with one another and contribute to a number of cycles that make all life on Earth possible.
The cause of soil degradation and how it affects us Soil is not an inert medium but a living ecosystem that is essential to life.
How can we mitigate soil degradation? Many practices can be changed to prevent, and in some cases reverse, soil degradation. Here are some solutions: Practicing crop rotation allows different plants to grow in an area of soil every year. This allows the soil to replenish itself of nutrients that are lacking after the growth of one type of plant. Agroforestry involves growing crops around trees and other plants such as hedges. Trees create their own microclimate, which is favourable for crops.
They also act as a form of protection against wind and water damage and encourage biodiversity, which keeps ecosystems strong and healthy. Reports to Conventions. July English French Spanish. View All. Tracking Tools. May Tracking Tool Tracking Tool Guidelines September GEF Strategy. April GEF-6 Programming Directions. October January Land Management - English French Spanish.
Related Publications. This can be achieved partly by establishing linkages to carbon markets to make the cost benefit ratios favorable for adoption SLM practices. And third, there is a need for more public investments to support SLM to slow land degradation and reclamation of already degraded lands. Land is often a limiting factor of economic output, and thus its degradation may further undermine the prospects of economic growth in the poor areas of Kenya. Open Access This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License, which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author s and source are credited.
Skip to main content Skip to sections. This service is more advanced with JavaScript available. Advertisement Hide. Economics of Land Degradation and Improvement in Kenya. Kirui Alisher Mirzabaev.
Open Access. First Online: 12 November Keywords Economics of land degradation Drivers of land degradation Sustainable land management Cost of land degradation Kenya. Download chapter PDF. Introduction Land degradation is a multi-faceted and complex phenomenon Mbow et al.
Land degradation is more pronounced in the Eastern parts and North Eastern parts of Kenya as shown in Fig. Bai et al. More recently, Le et al.
Open image in new window. Kenya has been undergoing dynamic land use and land cover changes over the last decade. Table The other documented unsustainable management practices include water pollution, soil nutrient mining, overgrazing, and cultivation on steep slopes.
According to Blum soil is a limited resource and could be considered a non-renewable resource Bai et al. Areas with poor soil fertility and with poor management practices tend to suffer from soil nutrient depletion.
Fertilizer application rates in much of Kenya remain low Table This process is not sustainable. Agro ecological zone Marginal rain shadow Source Tegemeo survey data. Conceptual Framework The conceptual framework applied in this study follows the ELD framework presented in Nkonya et al. Empirical Strategy The empirical approaches used to estimate the determinants of SLM adoption and the number of SLM technologies adopted are discussed in detail in this section.
Drivers of Number of Sustainable Land Management Practices Adopted Land degradation usually occurs due to lack of use of sustainable land management practices. Those factors preventing households from adopting SLM practices are also likely to lead land degradation. Therefore, analyzing the drivers of SLM is similar in its implications as analyzing the drivers of land degradation.
The number of SLM technologies adopted by agricultural households is a count variable ranging from 0 to 12 in our case. Thus the assessment of the determinants of the number of SLM technologies adopted needs to be conducted by Poisson regression model Xiang and Lee ; Greene Poisson regression model PRM is normally the first step for most count data analyses.
Thus in this study, we apply PRM to the following reduced form econometric model using nationally representative agricultural household survey data from Kenya. The most common SLM practices include: cutoff drains and drainage trenches, terraces planted with fodder species such as Napier grass, contour ploughing, use of stone bounds and trash lines, and tree planting, use of manure, inorganic fertilizer and compost and agricultural lime.
The major source of knowledge and extension on these technologies came from agro-dealers, followed by government extension offices, and then private companies. The role of local and international NGOs was relatively low Fig.
The most important constraint against using these technologies were cited to be their high costs and lack of information and expertise in their proper application Fig.
The results of the regression on the determinants of the number of SLM technologies used by households are given in Table Variables Coefficient Standard error z-value Confidence interval lower, upper Extension dummy 0.
The results show that the costs of land degradation, using land use change as a measure and the Total Economic Values framework accounting for the losses of ecosystem services, were about This translated to about 1.
Source Calculated by the authors. However, there have also been improvements in land use of about 19 billion USD equivalent, making the net change in the Total Economic Value of land ecosystems in the country positive by about 8 billion USD in as compared to Table The results on costs of taking action verses inaction against land degradation are presented in Table Results show that the costs of action against land degradation are lower than the costs of inaction in Kenya by about 4 times over the 30 year horizon.
The costs of action were found to equal about 18 billion USD over a year horizon, whereas if nothing is done, the resulting losses may equal to almost 75 billion USD during the same period. The implications is that each dollar spent on addressing land degradation is likely to have about 4 dollars of returns.
This is a very strong economic justification favoring action as opposed to taking no action. We present the simulated results of rain-fed maize yield under business-as-usual BAU and integrated soil fertility management ISFM scenarios for a period of forty years in Kenya in Table The average maize yields are higher under ISFM—1.
Under ISFM, yield end-line yield declined by about 2. Under ISFM, yield declined is negligible about 0. Similarly, the use of land degrading management practices on irrigated rice leads to a decline of about Assuming that the levels of degradation is comparable to that occurring on the two major crops, then the total cost of land degradation on cropland is about 2. A detailed methodological approach is presented in Chap. Results show that land degradation in grazing biomass had a huge impact on milk production in Kenya.
Amr, H. Sahel NGO population network case study. Google Scholar. Bai, Z. Global assessment of land degradation and improvement: pilot study in Kenya. Land degradation and improvement in Argentina. Identification by remote sensing p. Global assessment of land degradation and improvement 1: Identification by remote sensing. Baker, T. Using the soil and water assessment tool SWAT to assess land use impact on water resources in an East African watershed.
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Livestock Res. Soil conservation and sustainable land use: An economic approach. Dregne, H. Erosion and soil productivity in Africa. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 45 4 , — Eswaran, H. Land degradation: an overview. In Responses to land Degradation. Oxford Press, New Delhi, India. Sustainable use and management of natural resources. Land degradation estimates in Kenya: Chapter 4. Rome, Italy. Friedl, M. Remote Sensing of Environment, 1 , —
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