Describe and suggest reasons for the variations shown between continents in the amount of severly graded land.

Andrei Zevakin 12DP

Land degradation is the reduction in the capacity of the land to provide ecosystem goods and services and assure its functions over a period of time for the beneficiaries of these. Throughout many decades, it has become a widespread issue that many countries come across with. This can be illustrated by the fact that an area of 26% is affected by land degradation

The population size has increased over the decades and it will continue to increase which means that the need for food supply and other essential factors that human-life is dependent upon, is very important. However, the lack of understanding how to handle agriculture is the main concern why land degradation is reaching its figures. As people demands are high, quick solutions are needed to meet the standards and these include: deforestation, overgrazing and monoculture. Although, they do fix the agricultural problem, it unfortunately has huge effects on land degradation.

The highest degradation rates are in Europe where about 48% of the land suffers from degradation. Agricultural activities make up about 22% of the degraded land. The fact that the land in Europe is fertile as there is a lot of pressure put on the arable land and this might be the reason why the land degradation is the highest in Europe. The reason, why 26% of the land degradation comes from other human or natural activities, might be the fact that Europe is a well-developed continent and higly industrialised as well and this tends to contaminate the soil.

Asia and the Pacific and North Africa are also among places that have a high degradation percentage with 29% and 34% respectively. In Asia and the Pacific, agriculture causes 42% of the land degradation as there are large extents of people living in the area which means more land is put for use. Due to the hotter climate, the land is not that fertile as in Europe and might prove to be a reason for high land degradation rates.

However, the lowest land degradation stats can be seen in North America where only 16% of the land is degraded. Though, most of the land degradation comes again from agriculture (77%) as there are many people to take care of and thus putting more pressure on the land use. Due to the fact that most of the land in North America is unarable, it gives such a low land degradation percentage.

In conclusion, the alarming percentage of degraded land which stands at 26% will remain as a huge problem in the world and until people will learn to use the land sustainably, the improvements cannot be seen. As the climate change is not entirely controllable, there will always be slight land degradation caused by the climate, however the issue of land degradation is fairly managable if done correctly.