Context: Growing Population, rapid urbanization, social, cultural, and environmental aspects are placing unprecedented pressure on land.
Need for Land Management
- Land is integral to all human activities providing ecological, economic, social, and cultural services.
- This multidimensional utility of land is often overlooked in land management practices leading to excessive stress and land degradation.
- Globally, the annual losses of ecosystem services due to land degradation has been estimated at $6 trillion.
- The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (COP14) in New Delhi in 2019 specifically discussed the problem of land degradation experienced by different countries and the need to find ways of achieving land degradation neutrality.
- The Food and Agriculture Organization report, ‘State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture: The System at Breaking Point’ (2021), argued that a sense of urgency needs to prevail over a hitherto neglected area of public policy and human welfare— that of caring for the long-term future of land, soil, and water.
- The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s special report on ‘Climate Change and Land’ (2019) suggested country-level stocktaking of land management practices. It also proposed several near- and long-term actions with the thrust on land management options that reduce competition for land with co-benefits and minimum negative impacts on key ecosystem services.
Challenges in Land Management in India
- India has 2.4% of the world’s geographical areas catering 17% of the world population and cattle population posing several management challenges.
- Around 30% of total geographical area is degraded land. This is increasing due to unscientific agricultural practices, deforestation, and climate change.
- Though arable land in India is 155 mha (~50% of GA), one of the largest in the world, however, around 58% of Indian population is still dependent on agriculture leading to intensive agricultural practices, land fragmentation and degradation of land.
- Development targets and the demand for land to accommodate the growing population, infrastructure, rapid urbanization, and social, cultural, and environmental aspects are placing unprecedented pressure on land.
- This leads to land use conflict, escalation of land prices, changing land rights and eventually squeezing natural areas and compromising ecological services.
- This adversely affect the livelihood opportunities of the people who directly depend on environmental resources, but also the buffering effects of natural ecosystems in the face of disasters such as floods and droughts, temperature rise, and environmental pollution are severely compromised.
Administrative Challenges
- In India, current land management practices are sectoral with each department following its own approach.
- Land management falls under the purview of State governments.
- Further, cultural land is privately owned, and land-use decisions are constitutionally vested with the owner.
- Apart from this administrative complexity, the challenges to adopt and implement appropriate land management practices in the country include:
- knowledge gaps, a short-term planning bias, a fragmented approach, lack of action for unforeseen events, and regulatory barriers.
Administrative Solutions
- To achieving sectoral integration and addressing these challenges, it is imperative to set up a multi-stakeholder platform at the district and sub-district levels to bring together farmers, other land managers, policymakers, civil society organizations, business leaders, and investors under a common platform.
- Article 243ZD (1) of the Constitution provides for district planning committees to consolidate plans from panchayats and municipalities.
- This committee may be activated in the direction of preparing a land management plan, covering both agricultural and non-agricultural sectors.
- A landscape approach will provide deep insights to assess the potential of land and the scope of allocation and reallocation of land for appropriate uses.
- This will help evaluation, negotiation, trade off, and decision-making.
- A climate-smart landscape approach will contribute to climate objectives, increased agricultural production, improved local livelihoods and the conservation of biodiversity.
A case of Institutional Support
- Science has shown the importance of considering land as a system and promoting integrated landscape management.
- The U.K. Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology in its Brief 42, ‘Sustainable land management: managing land better for environmental benefits’, in 2021 observed that “actions for addressing and adapting to climate change, achieving food security and tackling the biodiversity crisis are all embedded in and depend on how land is managed.”
India’s parliamentarians can initiate deliberations on the emerging challenges of integrated land management practices and help devise appropriate policies for long-term sustainability by involving all actors across the scale, both horizontal and vertical.