Land Degradation Research Paper

Sustainable land management is increasingly becoming an important topic recent time in sustainable development agenda because land degradation poses a great challenge for sustainable development (ELD initiative, 2010). The economic consequences of land degradation are severe among the poor and marginalized populations who usually occupying degraded land and heavily depend on natural resources. Thus, addressing land degradation is important to eradicating poverty and achieving food security for the poor agricultural-based communities like India (Oliver Kiptoo Kirui , 2016). Semi-arid and rain fed area dominated countries like India are facing a severe problem with land degradation.

The growing literature has been significantly discussed land degradation through different dimensions and inter-linkages at the global level such as: classification of land degradation, drivers of land degradation, and cost of land degradation. Land degradation can be classified into physical, chemical and biological categories. These categories do not necessarily occur individually and spiral feedbacks between processes are often present. Physical land degradation refers to erosion, soil organic carbon loss, changes in the soil physical structure. Chemical degradation includes salinization,

Proximate causes of land degradation are those that have a direct on land services, proximate causes are further divided into bio-physical (natural) and anthropogenic (unsustainable land management practices). The underlying causes of land degradation are those that indirectly affect the proximate causes of land degradation. Empirical studies reveal divergent views on effect of underlying causes to land degradation. For example, Gripperud (1996) argued that population density leads to land degradation where as Bai et al. (2008) and Boserup (1965) results says that population density would improve the land