Context: 

“Arresting land degradation” was included among the top priorities by the G20 Working Group on Environment and Climate Sustainability.

About Land degradation in India:

• Rajasthan is the most land degradation-prone state. This is followed by Maharashtra and Gujarat. The most rapid deterioration in land quality is in the north-eastern region.
• Low per-capita availability of land: The per capita availability of arable land has shrunk to merely 0.16 hectares now which is much lower than the global average of 0.29 hectares.
• Reduction in land quality: It is mainly because of mismanagement and indiscriminate anthropogenic activity. 

Major reasons of land degradation:

• Deforestation
• Wind and water erosion
• Imprudent alteration of land use
• Excessive pressure on land beyond its carrying capacity
• Flawed farm practices such as imbalanced use of chemical fertilisers, inadequate application of organic manures, indiscriminate tillage and mismanagement of many other kinds

Steps taken:

• India has committed to achieve land degradation neutrality by 2030.
• According to a recent report issued by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, India has restored around 9.8 mha of degraded land between 2011 and 2018 — an average rate of reclamation of around 1.4 mha a year.

Steps required: India should take steps like:

• To safeguard the physical, chemical, and biological health of the existing normal land.
• To invest in land improvement.
• To evolve and meticulously enforce judicious land use policy based on the capability classification of land.

Way Forward:

• To restore best of the possibility, there is a need to have proper working collaboration of the Union, respective States and local authorities within the judicial land policies. 

News Source: The Business Standard