The degradation of rangeland worldwide threatens the global food supply

 

A report by the UN in May warned that more than 1.5 billion people are at risk due to the rapid, largely unnoticed, degradation of rangeland, which is defined as land used for grazing or hunting.

It said a mix of factors, including faulty policies, climate change and rising populations, are negatively affecting the rangeland that covers more than 54 percent of the Earth’s surface. It adds that more than 50 percent of rangeland has been degraded, the signs of which include diminished soil fertility, erosion, and rising salinity or alkanization of soil, resulting in inhibited plant growth.

The poor health of rangeland worldwide is a very worrying development as it provides more than 17 percent of the global food supply and also about a third of the Earth’s carbon storage.

The degradation has occurred primarily as a result of changes in land use, as rangeland is increasingly converted to farmland or developed to build factories, homes and offices as a result of increasing urbanization.

Even on rangeland that is still used for pastoral purposes, excessive grazing by pastoralists causes damage, as do government policies that incentivize over-exploitation, a trend seen in Brazil until recently.

Despite the dramatic increase in the degradation, much of it has gone largely unnoticed, perhaps because there is very little awareness of rangeland and its importance to the world, including the crucial role it plays in coping with climate change and global warming.

The biggest threats posed by the degradation of rangeland are of course its effects on global food security and the livelihoods of almost a quarter of world’s population; more than 2 billion people, mainly herders, ranchers and farmers, most of them poor and marginalized, depend on healthy rangeland to make a living, most commonly from rearing cattle.

The percentage of the population dependent on the rearing of livestock as the main source of income is highest in poorer nations. For instance, as much as 80 percent of people in many West African states depend on livestock production for a living. In Central Asia and Mongolia, the figure is 30 percent. Livestock production also accounts for a significant share of the global food supply, as it provides 18 percent of calories and 34 percent of protein consumption.

Yet, the amount of food provided through livestock production is increasingly disrupted by efforts to improve food security and productivity by converting rangeland to farmland in arid regions, which has resulted in degraded land and lower agricultural yields. This is true even in places such as the US, where large tracts of grassland have been converted to grow crops.

Rangeland has also suffered in other parts of the world, albeit for different reasons. In Central Asia, the advent of private management of rangeland and the introduction of industrial farming have resulted in herders having insufficient resources for their livestock.

Responsible governance of rangeland requires the meaningful participation of all, so that communities can take collective actions that improve access to land and combine traditional knowledge with practical skills.

Ranvir S. Nayar

In West Africa, the effects of climate change in one of the world’s driest regions have pushed herders into poverty as their pastures have become degraded to the point that they are unfit to support livestock in requisite numbers.

In the Sahel region and East Africa, conflicts, along with climate change, have affected livestock migration, which in turn has had an impact on the state of rangeland.

In some other parts of the world, most notably Europe and Asia, increasing urbanization has resulted in changes to land use from pastures to sites for homes, offices and even factories and mines.

South America has one of the largest populations of livestock in the world. It is also one of the largest producers of meat. But on top of the effects of climate change, even this region is not fully spared the effects of changes in land use. This was most notable during the four-year period when Jair Bolsonaro was president of Brazil and authorized large-scale farming and logging operations in the Amazon rainforest.

Outside of Brazil, climate change, deforestation linked to industrialized agriculture and extractive activities, and changes of land use have also led to the degradation of rangeland in the region.

While the damage is extensive, and not easy to reverse or even curb, it is not yet too late to take remedial action. If we are to reverse the trend, however, it is important for all stakeholders to play their part. Responsible governance of rangeland requires the meaningful participation of all, so that communities can take collective actions that improve access to land and combine traditional knowledge with practical skills.

One of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals is for the world to achieve neutrality in land degradation, which means maintaining the amount and quality of healthy land needed to support global food security and ecosystems. This is only possible when every participant in the process is fully involved, across national borders.

Traditional knowledge and heritage is also a key factor and so pastoralists who have been in the business for generations must share their hereditary knowledge with the wider community so that more people adopt the proven best practices traditionally used by generations of livestock producers.

• Ranvir S. Nayar is the managing editor of Media India Group and founder-director of the Europe India Foundation for Excellence.