Land areas with natural households and cycles are becoming less and less. Humanity does not manage to destroy only as much as it can restore.

The Global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include Goal 15 “Life on Land”. It is committed to the sustainable use of soils and a reversal of land degradation. Unfortunately, this goal has also been far from being reached so far. In its 2023 interim report on the state of play of the SDGs, the United Nations notes, with a view to Goal 15, that most of the improvements have remained “modes.”

Between 2015 and 2019, according to the UN report, at least 100 million hectares of good and productive land were degraded annually. It lost natural efficiency. This corresponds to about three times the area of Germany per year. The restrictions affect the food and water security of around 1.3 billion people, who are directly affected by land degradation.
The concept of land degradation is broader than soil erosion or soil degradation and includes all negative changes in the provision of ecosystem services. These are regulating, providing, cultural and supporting systems and cycles provided by the natural balance. This also includes biological and water-related functions as well as land-related social and economic services.

The causes of degradation include urban growth, deforestation and conversion of grassland, population growth, inappropriate agricultural practices, and the increasing demand for renewable resources and meat.

In sub-Saharan Africa, South and Western Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, the country's degradation has progressed faster than the global average. At 26.3 percent, their share (2019) was highest in East Asia.

According to estimates by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), we have changed people globally about 70 percent of the ice-free country – with an impact on more than three billion people – mainly due to intensive agriculture. The UNCCD forecasts a loss of unimaginable 32 billion tonnes of carbon from the soil between 2015 and 2030. Whereby carbon is the basic building block of all organic compounds.
Degradation-neutral world

To achieve a degradation-neutral world, a total of 1.5 billion hectares of land must be restored by 2030 for continuing current trends – 15 times the year's restricted area. It would also be conceivable to stop any new degradation and accelerated implementation of existing international commitments to restore one billion hectares. This could also achieve the objective of neutrality.

However, according to UNCCD, three parallel steps would be necessary: namely, the preservation of the still existing good and productive country, secondly, the reduction of the current degradation by sustainable methods of land management, and thirdly, a higher pace in efforts to restore degraded land and return it into a natural or more productive state.

At the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio, Texas in 2012 (Rio+20 Conference), heads of state and government promised to aim for a “land degradation neutral world”. This also includes a world without net floor loss. “The bottom line,” says the Federal Environment Agency, “soil loss shall be balanced, for example through 'erosion', sealing and other forms of soil degradation and soil restoration. Since land degradation cannot be completely prevented, it must at least be minimized and unavoidable degradation must be compensated by restoration and remediation measures." Ulrich Post