Since 1973, World Environment Day led by the United Nations Environment Programme has helped to drive actions on some of the planet’s most pressing environmental problems.
This year, World Environment Day (WED) is directing the world’s gaze to three perilous, though often-overlooked challenges & focusing on Land Degradation, Desertification and Drought resilience.
We are facing a worrying intensification of the triple planetary crisis: the crisis of climate change, the crisis of nature & biodiversity loss, & the crisis of pollution & waste. This crisis is placing the world’s ecosystems under assault. Billions of hectares of land are degraded, affecting about half of the world’s population & threatening half of the global GDP, rural communities, small holders farmers & the extremely poor are hit hardest. One-fifth of earth’s land is now degraded, our lakes are shrivelling up, our forests are disappearing, our farms are turning into dust bowls. This degradation affects the well-being of more than 3 billion people and the problem is only expected to get worse.
Like many countries around the world, Nagaland is also experiencing some of the most extreme impacts of climate crisis, the past few years we have witnessed that climate change is looming large over their existence from heat waves devastating crop yields to torrential rains causing flooding. Deforestation & growing population are resulting in land degradation even in our state, which is once known for good monsoons. It is one of the five states where land is degrading at an alarming rate, according to the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Space Applications Centre (SAC) atlas. According to United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) upto 40% of the planet land is degraded directly harming half of the world population & endangering roughly half of the global GDP.
The good news is that there’s still time to turn things around. But only if we act now. Here at climate reality, we are fighting to bring real solutions to communities all over the world, and with support from activists like you, we’re catalysing the bold climate action that our planet desperately needs. By Land Restoration, we can reverse the creeping tide of Land degradation, Desertification & Drought. Restoration boosts livelihoods, lowers poverty & slows climate change. Restoring just 15 percent of land & halting further conversion could avoid up-to 60 percent of expected species extinction. The UNCCD launched the Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) initiative to cut the extent of land degradation. Its good practice guidance document for Sustainable development Goal (SDG) indicator 15.3.1 provides the roadmap for assessing land degradation.
I hope this WED can be a turning point in our race to restoration. Now is the time to move from committing to action to acting on commitments to prevents, halt & reverse ecosystem degradation.
We are the first generation to how fully understand the immense threats to the land and might be the last one with the chance to reverse the course of destruction. We are the generation that can make peace with Land.
Research & Training Centre, Zubza
(Soil & Water Conservation Department)
