Context:
Land degradation is undermining Earth’s capacity to sustain humanity, and failure to reverse it will pose challenges for generations to come.
Answer:
Land is a finite and irreplaceable resource vital for agriculture, habitation, and ecological balance. With 2.5% of the world’s land area, India supports 16% of the global population. Effective land resource management is crucial to combat degradation, ensure sustainability, and balance competing demands for food, water, and energy amidst rising global needs.
Reasons for Land Resources Being Under Immense Pressure:
- Population Growth: India’s population has increased from 1 billion in 2001 to over 1.4 billion in 2023, putting unprecedented pressure on land for agriculture, housing, and infrastructure.
- Urban sprawl in cities like Delhi and Mumbai has reduced agricultural and forest land.
- Unsustainable Agricultural Practices: Overuse of chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and water-intensive crops like sugarcane has degraded land quality.
- Punjab faces extensive soil salinisation due to unsustainable irrigation.
- Climate Change: Rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, and droughts accelerate land degradation.
- Nearly 30% of India’s land is undergoing desertification.
- Rapid Urbanisation and Industrialisation: Expanding cities encroach upon fertile agricultural land, while industries contribute to pollution and habitat destruction.
- Mining in Jharkhand has degraded large tracts of forest land.
- Deforestation and Overgrazing: Forests are cleared for agriculture, and overgrazing reduces vegetation cover, leading to erosion.
- North-eastern states like Tripura report 70% forest degradation.
Significance of Effective Land Resource Management:
Addressing Global Food Demands:
- Enhancing Agricultural Productivity: By restoring degraded land and adopting sustainable practices, effective land management can increase food production to meet growing global demands.
- The National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA) promotes integrated farming systems and organic practices.
- Preventing Land Degradation: Soil conservation measures, crop rotation, and use of bio-fertilisers help maintain soil fertility and reduce erosion.
- The Soil Health Card Scheme ensures better soil quality management, improving crop yields across 120 million hectares of agricultural land in India.
- Expanding Cultivable Land: Reclaiming wastelands for agriculture can increase the arable area and reduce pressure on existing agricultural lands.
- India’s Wasteland Development Programme has converted barren lands into productive farmlands.
- Promoting Precision Agriculture: Technologies like satellite mapping and AI optimise land use for food production, ensuring efficient utilisation of arable land.
- The Remote Sensing Applications Centre in Uttar Pradesh aids farmers in precision agriculture using satellite data.
Addressing Global Water Demands:
- Protecting Watersheds: Conservation of catchment areas and vegetation cover minimises runoff, improves groundwater recharge, and sustains water bodies.
- The Atal Bhujal Yojana focuses on groundwater conservation.
- Reducing Soil Erosion: Land management techniques like contour farming and afforestation prevent sedimentation in rivers and reservoirs, ensuring water availability for agriculture and drinking purposes.
- Afforestation in degraded lands under the Green India Mission helps improve watershed health.
- Efficient Water Use in Agriculture: Micro-irrigation systems like drip and sprinkler irrigation reduce water wastage and enhance irrigation efficiency.
- The Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY) has brought over 13 million hectares under micro-irrigation.
- Mitigating Water Pollution: Effective land management prevents agrochemical runoff into water bodies, preserving freshwater ecosystems.
- Restrictions on fertiliser use in vulnerable zones under the National Water Policy.
Addressing Global Energy Demands:
- Promoting Renewable Energy: Utilising degraded or uncultivable lands for solar and wind energy projects reduces dependence on fertile agricultural lands.
- Gujarat’s Charanka Solar Park was built on wastelands.
- Integrating Agroforestry: Agroforestry systems produce biomass for energy generation while maintaining agricultural productivity.
- The National Agroforestry Policy promotes tree-based farming systems for sustainable energy solutions.
- Harnessing Bioenergy: Effective land use management supports cultivation of energy crops like bamboo and jatropha on degraded lands, reducing the impact on food crops.
- National Mission on Bio-Energy encourages biofuel production from non-edible crops.
- Reducing Energy-intensive Practices: Land management reduces the need for energy-intensive processes like deforestation and soil reclamation.
- Energy-efficient farming techniques under the Energy Efficient Pumping Programme save energy and protect land resources.
Effective land resource management ensures a sustainable balance between competing food, water, and energy demands. By adopting integrated and technology-driven solutions, India can lead efforts in achieving global sustainability goals.
‘+1’ Value Addition:
Stepping back from the precipice: Transforming land management to stay within planetary boundaries – a million sq km of land is getting degraded each year, with an estimated 15 million sq km already impacted — more than the entire continent of Antarctica — by land degradation.
