IFPRI Policy Seminar “Economics of Land Degradation and Improvement--A Global Assessment for Sustainable Development” held on December 3, 2015. Presentation by Ephraim Nkonya, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI.

1. Book Launch seminar,
IFPRI December 3, 2015
The cost of
action of &
inaction
against land
degradation

2. What is land degradation?
According to Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment (2005),
land degradation is a long-term
Loss of ecosystem services
• Definition significantly differs
from past focus on loss of
provisioning Services
• Reflects the United Nations
sustainable Development Goals
(SDG)
• Complicates rigorous analysis

3. What does this study contribute to literature and
current debate on Sustainable Development?
• New data on global land degradation
• NDVI – correct GLADA data for carbon fertilization (CF) &
rainfall variability (RV) to isolate anthropogenic LD
• Conducted groundtruthing of satellite data in six countries -
strong agreement between community & satellite for LD
• Using total economic value (TEV), compute cost of land
degradation & benefit of sustainable land management
(SLM):
• Use Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)
land use change data to compute the change in value of
ecosystem services
• Use crop and livestock simulation models to compute the cost of
LD on crop and grazing lands
• Develop statistical model for computing grazing land biomass
productivity using NDVI

4. Global extent of land degradation
& improvement:
With & without correction for carbon
Fertilization (CF) & rainfall variability (RV)

5. Extent of anthropogenic land degradation &
improvement: corrected for FC & RV
Source: Bao et al 2014
Unlike Bai et al (2008), land degradation
Is seen in poor and rich countries & in tropical
& temperate regions

6. Land degradation: no correction for CF & RV
Loss of Net Primary Production between 1981-2003 – Bai et al 2008
Cartography: Valerie Graw; Data Source: FAO GeoNetwork

7. Why LD in North America, Australia & East
Europe? Forest fire & logging increasing
Forest fire hotspots
Source: http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.de/2012/03/happy-birthday-envisat.html

8. Global cost of land degradation

9. Global cost of land degradation – regional distribution
Total cost due to LUCC & use of land degrading
management practices ≈ US$300 billion

10. Regional distribution of ecosystem services stock value and cost
of land degradation due to LUCC

11. Who bears the heaviest burden of the cost of
land degradation due to LUCC? The world!!

12. What is the cost of action & inaction against Land Degradation?
Region
Cost of
Action
Cost of
Inaction
Cost of action as % of
cost of inaction
MRRa of action
against LD
30-year planning horizon, 2007 US$ billion
SSA 686 3226 21 5
LAC 825 3289 25 4
NAM 792 5147 15 6
East Asia 681 2910 23 4
Oceania 429 2899 15 7
South Asia 263 636 41 2
SE Asia 165 431 38 3
East Europe 815 5359 15 7
West Europe 221 1021
22
5
Central Asia 53 350 15 7
NENA 77 672 12 9
Total 5007 25939 19 5
Highcostofinaction&highreturnsto
takingaction

13. • SSA accounts for the most significant loss & Europe
experiences the least cost
• Hotspots of high costs of land degradation in both
low and high income countries
• Land user direct impact on land degradation is only
46%. Incidence of loss lies heavily on the global
community and on off-site communities
• Therefore:
• Land degradation is everyone’s problem
• All cause LD
• All are affected by LD
• All benefit from restoration of degraded lands
• So all should take action against LD

14. Taking action against land degradation
• The cost of taking action is only 20% of
the cost of inaction. This means, the
returns to taking action are quite high
• Sustainable development goals &
increasing land value are among major
opportunities for taking action against
LD
• It is time to take action against land
degradation – just as Yacouba
Sawadogo did!!

15. Acknowledgement
• BMZ/GIZ provided funding for this study
• Many sources provided data and support for the study.