Agriculture, Forestry and Environmental Sustainability: A Way Forward

Abstract

Sustainability is a big issue in the modern context, with the focus to sustainable development for the earth will be clean and green. The issues of the environmental damage, forest depletion and food security are all coming under the umbrella of sustainability. Approaches for the sustainable development are a need of time for proper environmental management, boosting up the agricultural productivity, and conservation of the forests with least harm to environment. Proper management of forests resources and eco-friendly agricultural practices would help to maintain the ecosystem services and ecological resilience leading to environmental sustainability. The natural balance of sustainability through effective management of agriculture and forestry sector would help to maintain the ecological systems of the world. As per the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), globally 815 million people is suffering from proper supply of food with 155 million children have age group below 5 years without adequate food. As per the reports of the State of Food Security and Nutrition (SFSN) in the world, the global food production needs to be increased up to 50% depending upon population strength and changing dietary pattern. Globally around 3.3 million hectares of forests area were reduced between 5 years from 2010 to 2015. It was found that within a time span of 130 years, the warming of earth’s surface has taken place up to 0.85 °C, and level of sea rise has taken place up to 0.2 m within a span of 10 years. Environmental degradation, food security and deforestation are the three-dimensional challenge towards sustainable development. Considering these issues, pathways towards sustainability are yet to be properly explored. Newer technologies would lead to expansion of agriculture and put pressure on other natural resource base. Under such situation, integrity between activities of human being with ecological system is the key to achieve sustainable development. Minimizing use of non-renewable inputs in the agriculture would help to maintain the agricultural sustainability. Protecting the resource base of forests along with promoting various sustainable forest management (SFM) schemes would help to maintain forest sustainability. Lesser pollution and degradation of the environment with a sustained environmental management approach is the key for environmental sustainability. To achieve such conditions, one should go for productive use of indigenous knowledge along with technological expertise. Community participation in all aspects would act as workforce towards achieving sustainable development. However, challenges are there to develop integrated policies both at the national and international level to achieve sustainability in agriculture, forestry and environment. To overcome such challenges, knowledge both at institutional level and policy level would act as appropriate incentive for development towards sustainable earth. The main objective behind writing this title is to address sustainability issues and approaches of conservation in the fields of agriculture, forestry and environment. The present chapter would act as basic guidelines of sustainability approaches for effective management of natural resource.