Why have India's grasslands historically been classified as 'wastelands'? What are the ecological and livelihood costs of this classification?

Open Natural Ecosystems (ONEs) — grasslands, savannas, scrublands and deserts — cover a substantial part of India, yet the fifth Wastelands Atlas of India (2019) still maps 55.76 million hectares, nearly 17% of the country, as "wasteland" [1]. This revenue-centric label, rather than any ecological assessment, explains their historical neglect.

Why the 'wasteland' classification arose

• Colonial revenue logic: land yielding no cultivation revenue or timber was recorded as unproductive "waste", a category carried forward into post-Independence revenue records.
• Forest-centric conservation: legal protection developed around tree cover; open ecosystems fall outside the Forest (Conservation) Act's ambit, leaving them without a dedicated statute.
• Remote-sensing bias: mapping equated low canopy and sparse vegetation with degradation, so naturally treeless ecosystems were read as degraded land [1].
• Development framing: "wastelands" were seen as land banks available for productive diversion.

Ecological costs

• Diversion for plantations, intensive agriculture, industry and solar parks fragments habitats of grassland-endemic species such as the Great Indian Bustard, blackbuck and Indian wolf.
• Afforestation on grasslands replaces native grass-forb assemblages with monocultures, reducing soil carbon and grazing value.
• Genuine degradation compounds this: the Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas records about 97.84 million hectares under degradation in 2018-19 [2].

Livelihood costs

• Pastoral and grazing-dependent communities lose commons, with weak compensation since "wasteland" carries little recorded value.
• Shrinking rangelands hit livestock-based incomes and seasonal migration routes, worsening rural distress in dryland districts.
• The UN International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (2026) underlines how central these ecosystems are to pastoral livelihoods worldwide [3].

The core problem is a classification that measures land by revenue rather than ecological function. India's first-ever Guide to Grasslands and Other Open Natural Ecosystems, launched at UNCCD COP17 in Ulaanbaatar, marks a welcome shift toward recognising ONEs on their own terms [4]. Replacing "wasteland" with an ecosystem-based category in land records, and securing pastoral commons, would align conservation with both livelihoods and India's land degradation neutrality commitments.