What is land degradation? What do you know about India’s degraded land?
Answer:
Continuous use of land over a long period of time without taking appropriate measures to conserve and manage it, has resulted in land degradation.
India’s degraded land:
At present there is about 130 million hectares of degraded land in India. Approximately, 28 per cent of it belongs to the category of forest degraded area. 56 per cent of it is water eroded area. The rest is affected by saline and alkaline deposits. Some human activities such as deforestation, overgrazing, mining and quarrying too have contributed significantly to land degradation.