Land as a resource: relief, utilisation and degradation (overview)

Detail

Why land needs careful planning

• Land is a natural resource. A natural resource is anything in nature that people can use to meet their needs.
• Land supports five things:
• natural vegetation (forests, grasslands);
• wildlife;
• human life (homes, settlements);
• economic activity (farming, mining, industry);

• transport and communication (roads, railways, pipelines).

• Land is finite. This means its total amount is fixed and cannot be increased. So every use of land competes with other uses, and land must be planned with care.

• About 95% of our basic needs for food, shelter and clothing come from land (NCERT Class 10).
• This is the main idea of sustainable development: meet today's needs without harming the ability of future generations to meet their own. Land is where this idea is tested first.

Relief: how India's land is divided

• Relief means the shape of the land surface: its height, slope and landforms (plains, mountains, plateaus).
• India's land under each relief type (NCERT Class 10, Fig. 1.3):

Relief type	Share of India's area	Main value as a resource
Plains	~43%	Farming and industry. Flat land and deep alluvial soil (fine soil laid down by rivers), e.g. the Indo-Gangetic plain
Mountains	~30%	Perennial rivers (rivers that flow all year, fed by snow and glaciers, e.g. the Himalayan rivers), tourism and ecological value
Plateaus	~27%	Minerals, fossil fuels and forests, e.g. the Chota Nagpur plateau (Jharkhand–Odisha–Chhattisgarh)

• Order to remember: plains > mountains > plateaus.

What decides how land is used

• Physical factors (set by nature):
• topography: the slope and height of the land;
• climate: rainfall and temperature;

• soil type.

• Human factors (set by people):

• population density: the number of people per sq km;
• technological capability: for example, irrigation and machines;

• culture and traditions.

• Example chain:

• flat land + fertile soil + irrigation → farming covers most of the land;
• this is why Punjab and Haryana sow most of their land, while hilly north-eastern states sow very little (the details are in land-use-farming-systems).

Land-use data: what is and is not counted

• India's total geographical area is 3.28 million sq km.
• Land-use data cover only about 93% of this area. There are two reasons:
• most north-eastern states, except Assam, have not reported their land use fully;

• areas of Jammu and Kashmir occupied by Pakistan and China have not been surveyed.

• Exam trap: "reporting area" (about 93%) is not the same as "geographical area" (3.28 million sq km).

• The following are taught in land-use-farming-systems:
• the land-use categories;
• net sown area (land sown with crops at least once a year) by state: over 80% in Punjab and Haryana, and under 10% in Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Manipur and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands;
• forest cover compared with the 33% goal of the National Forest Policy (first set in 1952, now the 1988 policy).

Land degradation: a resource-use problem

• Land degradation means land losing its productivity: its ability to grow crops, forests or grass. It comes from bad use by people or from natural processes.
• Desertification is land degradation in dry areas (arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas). Fertile land slowly starts to behave like desert.

Human causes, by region (NCERT Class 10):

Cause	How it damages land	States
Mining and deforestation	Trees are removed → topsoil is exposed → erosion. Abandoned mines leave deep pits and heaps of waste (overburden: the rock and soil dug out to reach a mineral)	Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha
Overgrazing	Too many animals eat the grass cover → bare soil → wind and water erosion	Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra
Over-irrigation	Too much canal water → waterlogging, salinity, alkalinity	Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh
Mineral processing	Dust from grinding limestone, calcite and soapstone settles on soil → water cannot soak in easily	Industrial and mining belts
Industrial effluents	Effluents (liquid waste from factories) poison soil and water	Industrial areas

How over-irrigation ruins land (cause → process → result):

• Too much canal water is put on fields → the water table rises (the water table is the top level of underground water) → waterlogging: the soil stays soaked, and roots cannot get air.
• In hot weather, water rises up through the soil and evaporates → the salts it carried stay at the surface → salinity (too much salt) and alkalinity (soil becomes too basic, with a high pH).
• Result: white salt crusts form, and crop yields fall.
• NCERT exercise answer: in Punjab, the main cause of land degradation is over-irrigation, not deforestation or overgrazing.

Remedies (conservation measures):

• Afforestation: planting trees on bare land.
• Proper management of grazing: controlling how many animals graze and where.
• Shelter belts: rows of trees planted to slow down the wind and cut wind erosion. Used in dry western India.
• Thorny bushes planted to stabilise sand dunes, so the sand stops moving. Seen in the Thar region of Rajasthan.
• Waste-land management: bringing unused or damaged land back into productive use.
• Control of mining activities.
• Treatment of industrial effluents before they are released, so less soil and water are polluted.
• Soil types and soil erosion are covered in soils-of-india. Detailed regional problems are covered in geographical-issues-problems.

How big the problem is today

• The Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India was published by ISRO's Space Applications Centre (SAC), Ahmedabad. It mapped land using satellite data [2].
• Land degradation and desertification in India: 97.84 million hectares in 2018-19 [2].
• This is about 97.85 million ha, or 29.77% of India's geographical area [3]. (Often rounded to 29.7%.)
• The Atlas gives state-wise figures for degraded land in 2018-19. It also gives a 15-year change analysis, from 2003-05 to 2018-19 [2].

• Its purpose is to help plan and carry out land restoration schemes, using state-level data [2].

• Simple rule: almost one-third of India's land is degraded.

Global response: from Rio to the SDGs

• Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN): the state where the amount of healthy land stays the same or grows. New damage is balanced by restoring other land.
• LDN by 2030 is an SDG target (SDG 15, "Life on Land") [5].
• UNCCD (United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification) held COP14 in New Delhi in September 2019. COP means Conference of the Parties: the yearly meeting of the countries that signed a treaty.
• It adopted the Delhi Declaration [5].
• Countries agreed to make LDN by 2030 a national target for action [5].
• Countries are also expected to deal with insecure land tenure (unclear ownership or rights over land), including gender inequality in land rights [6].

• They are also expected to use land restoration to cut land-related carbon emissions, and to raise money from public and private sources [6].

• India's pledge at COP14 [4]:

• India raised its restoration target from 21 million ha to 26 million ha by 2030;
• the focus is on the most degraded and vulnerable agricultural land, forest land and wastelands;
• it uses a landscape restoration approach, which treats a whole area (farms, forests, water) together instead of one plot at a time.

Prelims Hooks

• Relief shares of India: plains 43% > mountains 30% > plateaus 27%.
• Perennial rivers are linked to mountains. Minerals and fossil fuels are linked to plateaus.
• Land-use data cover about 93% of the 3.28 million sq km. Among the north-eastern states, only Assam reports fully.
• Over-irrigation → waterlogging, salinity, alkalinity: Punjab, Haryana, western UP. Main cause in Punjab = over-irrigation.
• Mining-led degradation: Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, MP, Odisha. Overgrazing: Gujarat, Rajasthan, MP, Maharashtra. MP is the only state in both lists.
• Dust from grinding limestone, calcite, soapstone degrades land.
• Shelter belts stop wind erosion. Thorny bushes stabilise sand dunes.
• The Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas was made by SAC-ISRO, Ahmedabad: 97.85 million ha (29.77%) degraded in 2018-19. It compares with 2003-05 [2][3].
• UNCCD COP14: New Delhi, 2019, Delhi Declaration. India's target: 26 million ha restored by 2030 (raised from 21 million ha) [4][5].
• LDN by 2030 = an SDG target under SDG 15 [5].

Mains Points

• The spatial pattern of degradation follows the economy of each region.
• Mining and deforestation dominate in the mineral-rich Chota Nagpur–central plateau states.
• Overgrazing dominates in the dry west (Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra).
• Over-irrigation dominates in the Green Revolution belt (Punjab, Haryana, western UP).

• So one national policy is not enough. Remedies must be planned region by region.

• Finite land meets competing demands. About 95% of basic needs come from land, yet about 30% of India's land is degraded (2018-19) [3]. This threatens food security, rural incomes and ecosystem services (the free benefits nature gives, such as clean water and fertile soil). This is a GS-III link: resources and environment.

• Policy response.
• Local remedies from NCERT: shelter belts, grazing control, effluent treatment, mining control.
• National and global targets: the 26 million ha pledge, LDN by 2030 and the Delhi Declaration [4][5].

• Satellite monitoring by SAC-ISRO gives the state-wise data needed to track progress [2].

• Equity angle. The Delhi Declaration links restoration to secure land tenure and gender equality [6]. Restoring land is also a question of rural governance, not only a technical fix.