IMPACT OF LAND DEGRADATION ON RURAL DEVELOPMENT

Abstract: Land degradation is a global issue, with profound implications worldwide on biodiversity, eco-safety, poverty eradication, socio-economic stability and sustainable development. It is caused by multiple factors, including extreme weather conditions, hefty rain and drought and human actions that degrade the quality of soils affecting food production, livelihoods and the production and provision of other ecosystem goods and services. The deterioration in land quality, its topsoil, vegetation cover, or water resources is usually caused by natural hazards, primary causes, and underlying causes. Natural dangers are the conditions of the physical environment that lead to extraordinary degeneration dangers, for instance, steep inclines as a hazard for water depletion. Direct causes are inappropriate land use and inappropriate land management practices, for example, the cultivation of steep slopes without measures for soil conservation. Underlying causes are why these problematic archetypes of land use and management are exercised; for instance, the inclines may be planted because the landless poor require food, and preservation standards are not put in place because these farmers lack security of tenure. There is a difference, albeit with overlap, between inappropriate land use and inappropriate land management practices. Inappropriate land use refers to a situation where land is utilized in an environmentally improper manner in terms of sustainability. On the other hand, inappropriate land management regards land use in ways that could be characterized as sustainable if properly managed but where the necessary procedures are not followed. An excellent example is when there is a failure to adopt soil preservation stratagems where deemed necessary. Improper land management also refers to land use, which is ecologically sustainable under the low intensity of usage but in which the management becomes inappropriate at higher intensifies. Other examples are shifting cultivation and the grazing of semi-arid rangelands, for instance, avoiding irrigation water from the river during the first three weeks of river flow after a long period of drought, reducing the usage of chemical fertility and pesticides and avoiding herbicides. The government should promote social awareness to curtail deforestation and human activities that contribute to land degradation. We need to create social awareness, particularly amongst the farmers, on clean up plastic waste in the farms and avoid using plastics or reducing the single-use of plastic and enabling its reuse