Chapter 7 LAND DEGRADATION Land under Pressure


Ephraim Nkonya, Jawoo Koo, and Paswel Marenya, IFPRI; Rachel Licker, University of Wisconsin, Madison


I


n October 2011, the global population reached 7 billion people, a milestone that highlights the enormous pressure on the planet’s ecosystems. In


the face of this population growth, the farmland on which global food production depends is degrading rapidly. About 24 percent of global land area has been affected by land degradation. Tis area is equivalent to the annual loss of about 1 percent of global land area, which could produce 20 million tons of grain each year, or 1 percent of global annual grain production. Globally, 1.5 billion people and 42 percent of the very poor live on degraded lands.1


Population is growing fastest in the developing countries. In Sub-Saharan


Africa, annual population growth of 2.3 percent has led to ever smaller areas of arable land per capita. Between 1961 and 2009, per capita arable land in Sub- Saharan Africa fell by about 76 square meters a year, the steepest drop in the world (Figure 1). How can this crowded world feed growing numbers of people? Te most


feasible solution is to sustainably raise agricultural productivity on existing land. Tis means halting land degradation to avoid losing even more valu- able farmland. It also means raising soil fertility on existing farmland to boost yields and addressing other challenges, on and off farms, that have contributed to low agricultural productivity.


ACHIEVING ZERO LAND DEGRADATION


In September 2011 the United Nations General Assembly called for building a world with no land degradation. And, in October 2011, parliamentarians of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification reaffirmed this goal by


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