Chapter 9 - Land degradation evaluation based on SDG indicators in the eastern Himalayan region: A case study from Nagaland state

Abstract

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) launched the Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) initiative to cut the extent of land degradation. Its Good Practice Guidance (GPG) document for Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Indicator 15.3.1 provides the roadmap for assessing land degradation. Three subindicators namely, (i) land cover change, (ii) land productivity, and (iii) soil organic carbon (SOC) content are used to determine the soil health. A particular land area is regarded as degraded if one or more of these subindicators show signs of degradation. This method is known as the one-out-all-out (1OAO) approach. UNCCD signatory countries report the extent of degraded land in an effort to track and reduce this problem. India's commitment is to restore 26 million hectares of degraded land by 2030. As a case study, we wanted to assess the land degradation status of Nagaland, a northeastern state of India because of recent degradation reports. Trends.Earth application and various Earth observation data from 2001 to 2015 were used to compute this change. Results suggest that almost 66% of total land areas have remained stable, whereas 17.22% of the land has shown signs of degradation. However, with 16.78% of overall improvement seems to have counterbalanced this loss. Overall land degradation status of the state is found to be stable at least during the period of 2001 to 2015.