What’s the goal here? To sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation, and halt biodiversity loss. Two billion hectares of land on Earth are degraded, affecting some 3.2 billion people, driving species to extinction and intensifying climate change.
Facts and Figures: ➡ Every minute, 23 hectares of arable land are lost due to drought and desertification. ➡ Over the last two decades, approximately 20 per cent of the Earth’s vegetated surface has shown persistent declining trends in productivity, mainly due to unsustainable land and water use and management practices.
Ecosystems and Biodiversity Facts and Figures # The IPBES Report (5) stated that “around 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades, more than ever before in human history”.
Indicator 15.3.1: Proportion of land that is degraded over total land area
Throughout the Mediterranean basin, the long-term interaction between human activities and natural processes has led to the formation of unique ecosystems whose biodiversity may be higher than that of the “original” systems.
The stabling of livestock farming implies changes in both local ecosystems (regeneration of forest stands via reduced grazing) and those located thousands of kilometers away (deforestation to produce grain for feeding livestock). Despite their importance, these externalities are poorly known.
The burning and the deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon forest, which has been recently highlighted by the international press and occurs mostly on public or undesignated land, calls for an in-depth examination. This has traditionally been the main way to grab land, speculate, and simultaneously prove ownership by its occupation.
Environmental services of biodiversity, clean water, etc., have been considered byproducts of farming and grazing, but population pressures and a move from rural to peri-urban areas are changing land use practices, reducing these services and increasing land degradation.
Over the past 40 years, roads have been the main driver behind the State of Acre’s occupation and development. However, the expansion of roads, has often been associated with the advance of deforestation, habitat fragmentation, and social conflicts. There are no up-to-date data available on the current extent of Acre’s road network nor its environmental and socioenvironmental impacts.
Europe retains a great variety of cultural landscapes that constitute a significant part of the European cultural heritage. In the last decades, these high-quality landscapes are facing several challenges due to socio-economic transformations that often compromise their integrity.
The present study focuses on identifying and describing the possible proximate and underlying causes of deforestation and its factors using the combination of two techniques: (1) specialized consultation and (2) spatial logistic regression modeling.
Planning the adaptation of agriculture and forestry landscapes to climate change remains challenging due to the need for integrating substantial amounts of information. This information ranges from climate scenarios, geographical site information, socio-economic data and several possible adaptation measures.