Our Future on Earth
Publication year
Resource type
UNCCD Library
Material Type
ebook
The new goal is to establish targets that are useful and relevant both locally and globally; and to “decouple” economic growth and improvements to standards of living from environmental degradation and unsustainable resource use.
The proposed solutions are varied. There are suggestions, for example, to keep the food system within environmental limits by encouraging dietary changes: it seems possible to feed more people a healthy diet, using less land, by relying less on meat and dairy products and more on vegetables and grains. This approach has several benefits: it frees up land
for conservation, reduces CO2 emissions and pollution, and also improves human health (see chapter “Food”).
To address land degradation more broadly, wider initiatives are being developed. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) aims to achieve Land Degradation Neutrality, for example, by counterbalancing loss of productive land with recovery of degraded lands elsewhere. For example, the Great Green Wall Initiative has the stated intent of restoring millions of hectares of degraded land in the Sahel region of Africa.
The forecast is that the overall amount of land suitable for growing crops will stay the same, but we will need to squeeze ever more food out of that land for our growing population in our changing climate. The biggest boom in population over the next century is expected for sub-Saharan Africa, in areas often unsuitable for intensive agriculture due to poor soil quality and scarce water resources.
As well as contributing to climate change, the way we produce our food has other serious consequences for the environment and the livelihoods of people growing our food. Our current food system causes 60% of land-based biodiversity loss, 33% of soil degradation, and 61% of commercial fish stock depletion (see box “Seafood”). More than 40% of insect species are now threatened with extinction.
This is a huge problem given that three out of four fruit or seed crops used for human food depend, at least in part, on insect pollinators.
The proposed solutions are varied. There are suggestions, for example, to keep the food system within environmental limits by encouraging dietary changes: it seems possible to feed more people a healthy diet, using less land, by relying less on meat and dairy products and more on vegetables and grains. This approach has several benefits: it frees up land
for conservation, reduces CO2 emissions and pollution, and also improves human health (see chapter “Food”).
To address land degradation more broadly, wider initiatives are being developed. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) aims to achieve Land Degradation Neutrality, for example, by counterbalancing loss of productive land with recovery of degraded lands elsewhere. For example, the Great Green Wall Initiative has the stated intent of restoring millions of hectares of degraded land in the Sahel region of Africa.
The forecast is that the overall amount of land suitable for growing crops will stay the same, but we will need to squeeze ever more food out of that land for our growing population in our changing climate. The biggest boom in population over the next century is expected for sub-Saharan Africa, in areas often unsuitable for intensive agriculture due to poor soil quality and scarce water resources.
As well as contributing to climate change, the way we produce our food has other serious consequences for the environment and the livelihoods of people growing our food. Our current food system causes 60% of land-based biodiversity loss, 33% of soil degradation, and 61% of commercial fish stock depletion (see box “Seafood”). More than 40% of insect species are now threatened with extinction.
This is a huge problem given that three out of four fruit or seed crops used for human food depend, at least in part, on insect pollinators.
Keywords
land degradation neutrality
Great Green Wall (GGW)
food security
biodiversity conservation
bioenergy
food demand
hunger and poverty
small-scale farmers
land use
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