Nairobi, 20 July 2016: Roughly 30 per cent of the planet’s surface is land of one kind or another, and that’s where human beings live, so managing that land in a sustainable way is vital for human well-being.
The Economics of Land Degradation (ELD) initiative makes a compelling case for the economic benefit of sustainable land management (SLM) across the globe.
ELD aspires to be an integral part of policy strategies and decision-making. It plans to do this by increasing political and public awareness of the costs and benefits of land and land-based ecosystems.
ELD implies preventing the loss of natural capital, preserving ecosystem services, combating climate change, and addressing food, energy, and water security.
It aims to transform global understanding of the economic value of productive land based on both market and non-market values, and to improve stakeholder awareness for socio-economic arguments to improve SLM.
“Land degradation and desertification are among the biggest environmental challenges of our time. In the last 40 years, we lost nearly a third of the world’s arable farmland due to erosion, just as the number of people to be fed from it almost doubled. That’s why the UN General Assembly declared 2015 as the International Year of Soils,” says former UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner, in the Foreword to an October 2015 study titled The Economics of Land Degradation.
The study looked at 42 countries in Africa. The good news is that while Africa remains the most severely affected region, the benefit of taking action across the continent outweighs the cost of implementing it.
Desertification already affects between a third and a half of the Africa’s land area to some degree.
The study shows that an additional 280 million tons of cereal crops could be produced every year simply by preventing human-induced soil erosion. This would significantly reduce food import costs and poverty.
“The ELD Report for Africa clearly provides a strong rationale for investment in land degradation neutrality programmes. The benefit of action varies from 4 to 26 times that of the cost incurred. The report brings out an authoritative account of attractive return on investment in land management practices in every part of Africa,” says UNEP expert Pushpam Kumar.
Some key messages
- In Africa, the loss of about 280 million tons of cereal crops per year from about 105 million hectares of cropland can be prevented if soil erosion is managed.
- The cost of inaction measured in terms of the value of cereal crop loss due to soil erosion-induced nutrient depletion over the next 15 years (2016–30) is equivalent to about 12.3 % of the GDP of 42 African countries.
- Taking action through investment in SLM in the next 15 years would only cost about 1.15% of the GDP of these countries.
- The benefits of taking action in Africa are almost 7 times the cost of inaction.
- Africa could generate about $71.8 billion per year if all countries took action against soil erosion.
- The net present value of taking action against soil erosion-induced nutrient depletion on arable land used for cereal production over the next 15 years is about $62.4 billion per year.
- The study finds a positive and statistically significant relationship between the rate of poverty gap and soil nutrient depletion from cereal cropland in Africa.
Kenya case study
A June 2016 ELD case study looked at SLM uptake in the counties of Bungoma, Kakamega and Siaya in western Kenya.
One of the findings was that farms where the head of the household is female are more likely to adopt an SLM practice. Gender is not important for manure uptake, but intercropping is more likely to be practiced on a farm with a female household head.
In Siaya, an SLM practice is more likely to be used where more of the farm is owned by, and more of the labour used on the farm is from, family members.
Farmers who reported experiencing land degradation are more likely to undertake intercropping but less likely to practice manuring.
In terms of access to assets and advice, key variables include membership of agricultural groups or projects, contact with advisers and access to machinery or farm buildings. More recent contact with advisers is related to a greater likelihood of SLM uptake and use of manure. However, the picture with group membership is less clear: in Kakamega and Siaya it leads to increased SLM uptake, but it is not important in Bungoma.
SLM practices with low input costs, such as manuring and intercropping, offer very high benefit-to- cost ratios for farmers and they provide a positive net present value up to 2030.
SLM practices with high upfront costs and high maintenance costs, such as physical terraces and agroforestry, offer much lower benefit-to-cost ratios for individual farmers and have a longer return on investment period.
The study’s recommendations include: i) extending subsidies to include support for SLM practices that show universal benefits; ii) further investigation into publicly-funded payment for ecosystem services schemes and research into other economic measures to support delivery of societal benefits; iii) support for Agricultural Innovation Systems; iv) improved monitoring of land management and yield relationships, building farmer capacity and considering use of mobile phone-based monitoring approaches, and v) investment in improved climate and soil information services and facilities.
For more information, please contact: Pushpam Kumar: Pushpam.Kumar@unep.org
Want to learn about the ecosystems approach? An online learning opportunity is coming up in September.
