Strong national evidence base for land restoration must in fight against degradation

New Delhi: India is facing a serious land degradation threat as can be realised by the Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India figures, according to which 97.85 million hectares, or nearly 29.77% of the country’s geographical area, is under degradation.

And out of this massive area, a staggering 25 per cent is experiencing desertification. land degradation leads to reduction of resilience, weakens ability of a system to maintain its structure and sustain basic functions under stress. This finally results in increased pressure on ecological systems.

India restored 21.76 mn ha Land during 2011–2020, generating 1.22 bn person-days of Employment, as per the recently released Second Progress Report on the Bonn Challenge, covering the period 2011–2020. In 2015, the country made an initial commitment to restore degraded and deforested land, which was subsequently enhanced to 26 million hectares by 2030.

To achieve these targets, massive amount of funding is needed as Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Bhupender Yadav highlighted at the Ministerial Dialogue on ‘Innovative Financial Mechanisms for Healthy Land and Drought Resilience’, during the 17th Conference of Parties (CoP17) of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), at Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia). He said “Land restoration is not a cost, but an investment in food, water, biodiversity, livelihoods and long-term resilience”. He underlined that addressing desertification, land degradation and drought at scale requires diversified, predictable and sustained sources of finance beyond public budgets, along with stronger public-private partnerships.

Restoration of degraded land is not a one-time plantation activity. A lot of labour, time and money goes into site preparation and soil and moisture conservation, community mobilisation etc which are recurring costs which public budgets alone may not be sufficient to meet. Private and international finance will be needed.

As India emphasised at the CoP17, “Finance must be continuous, verifiable and connected to local communities.” Domestic resources can achieve, but this cannot substitute for additional, adequate and predictable international finance for restoration and drought resilience.

India has combined various green-finance frameworks, under which there is financing for climate-change adaptation, sustainable land use, forestry and agriculture, afforestation and biodiversity conservation. The country’s Green Credit Programme enables public and private entities to finance restoration of degraded forest land. Credits are issued after five years of restoration and upon achieving at least 40 per cent canopy density, and may be used once for compensatory afforestation, statutory plantation or CSR obligations.

Monitoring the efforts for restoration of degraded land is one of the major component of the whole project.
India is undertaking the next reporting cycle for 2021–2025, in collaboration with the ICFRE Centre of Excellence on Sustainable Land Management and IUCN. This cycle will focus on three key dimensions – area restored, financial flows and employment generated – while strengthening the national evidence base for restoration.

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