India plans to restore 5 million hectares of badlands over the next two years, said Prakash Javadekar, Union Minister for Environment, Forests and Climate Change. He was speaking at the curtain-raiser event to announce the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) meet that India is hosting from September 2 to 13 at Greater Noida.
The event is expected to host ministers from a hundred countries and delegates from over 200 nations. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the meet. Around 3,000 delegates have already registered for the meet.
Desertification or land degradation is the process by which soil productivity is lost through the stripping away of the top soil due to human activities and events like over-cultivation, over-grazing, deforestation, poor irrigation, droughts and floods. India has experienced land degradation in a big way in recent years, with 30 per cent of its land being affected thus, which amounts to 96.40 million hectares.
The UNCCD is one of the three Rio conventions, along with those on climate change and biological diversity. Its main objective is to combat soil degradation involving long-term integrated strategies that focus on sustainable management of land and water resources. India is also in the process of developing a roadmap for achieving land degradation neutrality by 2030.
Land degradation is becoming a concern, since, according to UNCCD, it has already caused a five per cent reduction in total global net primary productivity and impacted the well-being of 3.2 billion people globally. Urbanisation alone is projected to cause the loss of around 3.3 million hectares of prime agricultural land per year by 2030 globally.