Land degradation takes many forms and affects water and land resources. It can diminish the natural capacity of the land to store and filter water leading to
water scarcity. The results of land degradation are significant and complex. They include lower crop yields, less diverse
ecosystems, more
vulnerability to natural disasters like floods and droughts, people losing their homes, less food available, and economic problems. Degraded land also releases
greenhouse gases, making climate change worse. Further possible impacts include: • A temporary or permanent decline in the
productive capacity of the land. This can be seen through a loss of
biomass, a loss of actual productivity or in potential productivity, or a loss or change in
vegetative cover and
soil nutrients. •
Loss of biodiversity: A loss of range of species or ecosystem complexity as a decline in the environmental quality. • Increased vulnerability of the environment or people to destruction or crisis. • Wars and conflicts. Degradation of soil is one of the factors which increase competition over agricultural land, and all except 3 conflicts inside states in Africa from the 1990s are linked to such competition. •
Environmental migration Sensitivity and resilience after the depletion of the
phosphate cover through miningSensitivity and
resilience are measures of the vulnerability of a landscape to degradation. These two factors combine to explain the degree of vulnerability. Sensitivity is the degree to which a land system undergoes change due to natural forces, human intervention or a combination of both. Resilience is the ability of a landscape to absorb change, without significantly altering the relationship between the relative importance and numbers of individuals and species that compose the community. It also refers to the ability of the region to return to its original state after being changed in some way. The resilience of a landscape can be increased or decreased through human interaction based upon different methods of land-use management. Land that is degraded becomes less resilient than undegraded land, which can lead to even further degradation through shocks to the landscape.
Agriculture By 2025 unsustainable farming and management practices led to the degradation of 996 Mha of agricultural lands; this accounts for over 60% of human-induced land degradation, which affects a total area of more than 1660 million hectares. Land degredation on farms is shaped by local choices and global drivers such as trade, climate change and demographic transitions. Farmers, as private actors, make decisions primarily based on productivity and profitability. The relationship between land degradation and agricultural productivity varies dramatically across regions and income levels. In high-income countries with intensive agricultural systems, the per hectare production losses from degradation are particularly severe, though often masked by heavy application of synthetic fertilizers and other inputs. This compensatory strategy creates a troubling paradox: while maintaining high yields in the short term, it generates diminishing returns, increases production costs, and often exacerbates the underlying degradation through soil acidification, nutrient imbalances and pollution. Threshold effects associated with land degradation may lead to land abandonment in areas with a long history of intensive agricultural systems. Most of sub-Saharan Africa exhibits relatively low degradation-induced yield losses, not because soils are healthier, but because other constraints including; limited access to inputs, mechanization, credit and markets, dominate as causes of
yield gaps. Land degradation is not uniform, even within a single farm, land parcels may vary in condition.
Farm size strongly influences land management and food production strategies, as well as farmers’ ability to address land degradation. Of the world’s 570 million farms, 85% are smaller than 2 hectares (ha) and cultivate just 9% of farmland, while the 0.1% of farms over 1,000 ha control nearly 50%. Medium-sized farms, those between 2 ha and 50 ha – play a particularly important role in Africa and Asia, where they manage about half of all agricultural land. Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are regions where degraded lands coincide with high poverty rates and childhood stunting. In 2025, 47 million children under five years of age suffering from stunting live in areas where stunting overlaps with significant yield losses from land degradation. These areas represent a convergence of environmental degradation and human deprivation. == Prevention and reversal ==