The Cost of Action and of Inaction Against Land Degradation
Post on 15-Apr-2017
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What is land degradation?
According to Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005), land degradation is a long-term Loss of ecosystem services• Definition significantly differs
from past focus on loss of provisioning Services
• Reflects the United Nations sustainable Development Goals (SDG)
• Complicates rigorous analysis
What does this study contribute to literature and current debate on Sustainable Development?
• New data on global land degradation• NDVI – correct GLADA data for carbon fertilization (CF) &
rainfall variability (RV) to isolate anthropogenic LD• Conducted groundtruthing of satellite data in six countries -
strong agreement between community & satellite for LD• Using total economic value (TEV), compute cost of land
degradation & benefit of sustainable land management (SLM):
• Use Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land use change data to compute the change in value of ecosystem services
• Use crop and livestock simulation models to compute the cost of LD on crop and grazing lands
• Develop statistical model for computing grazing land biomass productivity using NDVI
Global extent of land degradation & improvement:With & without correction for carbonFertilization (CF) & rainfall variability (RV)
Extent of anthropogenic land degradation & improvement: corrected for FC & RV
Source: Bao et al 2014
Unlike Bai et al (2008), land degradationIs seen in poor and rich countries & in tropical & temperate regions
Land degradation: no correction for CF & RVLoss of Net Primary Production between 1981-2003 – Bai et al 2008Cartography: Valerie Graw; Data Source: FAO GeoNetwork
Why LD in North America, Australia & East Europe? Forest fire & logging increasing
Forest fire hotspots
Source: http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.de/2012/03/happy-birthday-envisat.html
Global cost of land degradation – regional distribution
Total cost due to LUCC & use of land degrading management practices ≈ US$300 billion
What is the cost of action & inaction against Land Degradation?
RegionCost of Action
Cost of Inaction
Cost of action as % of cost of inaction
MRRa of action against LD
30-year planning horizon, 2007 US$ billion
SSA 686 3226 21 5
LAC 825 3289 25 4
NAM 792 5147 15 6
East Asia 681 2910 23 4
Oceania 429 2899 15 7
South Asia 263 636 41 2
SE Asia 165 431 38 3
East Europe 815 5359 15 7
West Europe 221 102122
5
Central Asia 53 350 15 7
NENA 77 672 12 9
Total 5007 25939 19 5
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• SSA accounts for the most significant loss & Europe experiences the least cost
• Hotspots of high costs of land degradation in both low and high income countries
• Land user direct impact on land degradation is only 46%. Incidence of loss lies heavily on the global community and on off-site communities
• Therefore:• Land degradation is everyone’s problem
• All cause LD• All are affected by LD• All benefit from restoration of degraded lands• So all should take action against LD
Taking action against land degradation
• The cost of taking action is only 20% of the cost of inaction. This means, the returns to taking action are quite high
• Sustainable development goals & increasing land value are among major opportunities for taking action against LD
• It is time to take action against land degradation – just as YacoubaSawadogo did!!
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