providing practical information about restoring degraded landscapes
Restoration and Degradation
Landscape degradation is the diminishing ability of landscapes to provide essential services to people and biodiversity. Fortunately, there are ways to restore these degraded landscapes through appropriate restoration approaches.
landscape degradation
Landscape degradation results from human-induced activities such as unsustainable agricultural practices that degrade and pollute soils, overgrazing and over-cultivation, and deforestation, leading to exhaustion and over-exploitation of landscapes. Natural factors such as extreme weather conditions, like droughts and heavy rainfall, also contribute to degradation. Degradation has far-reaching ecological consequences, including the loss of ecosystem services and biodiversity, intensified droughts and flooding, and accelerated climate change, which in turn exacerbates degradation.
Landscape degradation also poses challenges to social and political stability, contributing to poverty, conflict, and forced migration in both urban and rural areas. In addition, land degradation reduces the availability of healthy croplands and rangelands, affecting global food security.
