Land Degradation and Its Impacts on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

Abstract

Land degradation is a big challenge that has an impact on ecosystem integrity with reference to diminishing long-term ecological productivity, native biological diversity, and resilience. It is considered a major environmental issue around the world due to its adverse impacts on climate change, habitat and biodiversity loss, poverty, environmental hazards, and adaptive capacities. Human-induced processes including land use transformation, overexploitation of natural resources, population enhancement, economic development, human-induced climate change, ineffective laws, insecure tenure, and lack of agreements directly or indirectly cause land degradation. Around two-thirds of the carbon contained in both vegetation and soil has vanished due to land degradation since the 19 th century, adding considerably to global warming. Biodiversity is impacted by land use transformation primarily through habitat loss or modification, changes in species diversity and abundance, soil quality degradation, depletion of water resources, and overexploitation of endemic species. Weak policy and governance result in the dissuasion of sustainable management of land and the deprivation of previously sustainably governed areas. Various methods and techniques have been developed to conserve and maintain the sustainability of land resources through nature-based solutions, including sustainable land management (SLM), ecosystem-based perspective, conservation based on range and unit area, etc.