The global land base is the backbone to our success as a civilization. Land Use and Soil Resources offer an explanation on the driving factors of nutrient and water flows across world. Croplands are the sites of world food production, savannas and grasslands provide areas for grazing, while forests and woodlands are sources of fuel, wood, paper, timber, pharmaceutical products etc. Yet we have a poor understanding of the condition of these crucial land resources. With the rise in population placing ever-increasing pressures on scarce land, it is expected that governments of developing countries should give high priority to rational land use, improved land management, and avoidance of degradation. In this context we owe lot of expectations from the Indian government, as India being one of the fastest developing countries in the world, which reflect in its growing demand of land acquisition for industrialization. At international level, public concern has been tuned more towards pollution aspects of the environment and nature conservation, than with land as a productive resource. In developing countries, awareness by governments on the critical role played by land resources is poor and the liable institutions are also inadequately funded. Significant progress has been made over the past 50 years in approaches and methods for land resource survey, evaluation, and management. What is needed now is more widespread and effectual materialization of these methods at the ground level. Sustainability, the synergy between the production and conservation, is a central concept in land resource management. Management of land, of its soils, water, forests and wildlife, has been central to human society from its earliest times. Resources associated with the land provide the basis for more than 95% of human food supplies, the greater part of clothing and all needs for wood as a fuel and construction materials. Undoubtedly, developments of the industrial age have effectively substituted coal, oil and minerals for some of the fuel, construction and fibre needs, but have in no way removed the basic dependency of society upon the resources of the land.
We as a human being always competed for land, sometimes reaching the level of conflict, even in prehistoric times, among communities dependent on hunting and gathering. As soon as the record of history begins, it is clear that there were great inequalities in land availability. Food shortage has never been absent, and migrations in search of better resources have extended from biblical times to the great world expansion from the nineteenth to the first half of the twentieth century. Formerly, there was a solution to local problems of shortage of food and other basic necessities to take more land for cultivation. Usually this was through deforestations, as forested lands are used to be more fertile. In Europe in medieval times, in North America in the nineteenth century and in the last thirty years in India, tropical lands, forests and woodlands have receded; land suitable for growing crop has expanded and land for nature has been constantly reduced in this process. In addition to its main function for agricultural and forestry production, land is needed for many other purposes, including regulation of the atmospheric and water cycles, nature conservation, mineral supply, settlement and waste disposal. There is often conflict between competing uses. Some major issues in policy and planning centre upon land use, the supply of farming land, loss of forest cover and land needed to meet the urban expansion which now becomes a marked feature of the developing world. There is a need for common classifications of land use and cover, as a reference base for conversion between national systems. Means are available to survey land use, but in many less developed countries scarcely any reliable surveys have been carried out. As a result, data on land use are among the least reliable of all kinds of international statistics. Until information on land use is improved, development planning will remain without an adequate basis on many major issues. International conventions, such as the World Soil Charter, are of value mainly as a guide to policies at national level.
Three elements of land use are of key importance at all scales, whether for international policy, national planning, or for purposes of any development project:
Farming land: How much of the land is under cultivation? Most basic food products are produced from the land under consideration. One needs to know the area presently under cultivation to compare it with the potentially cultivable land, in order to assess what potential remains for expansion.
Forest cover: The area under forest is of much international concern from environmental point of view. At national level, a continued shrinking of forest area will unavoidably lead to shortage of wood products and non-sustainable overcutting.
Urban land: The trend towards urbanization in the developing world is strong and is not going to stop in the near future. Much of the expansion of the built-up area unfortunately takes place at the expense of prime-quality agricultural land. A balance must be struck between conflicting interests.
Besides its major role in planning as described above, land use is relevant in two other respects. First, the state of world land use, not only in regards to forest cover, is a matter of concern for whole lot of environmental issues; regulation of atmospheric carbon and preservation of nature and genetic resources. Secondly, in assessing potential for food production, estimates of the land requirements for other kinds of use are needed. At the first take in considering land use we think of agriculture and forestry, together with urban settlement. But there is a wider range of functions which land offers to human society. To count to few of them one need to put production first followed by: Regulation of the atmospheric and hydrological cycles; Storage and ongoing supply of non-renewable resources; Waste disposal; Production based on plant growth; Conservation of biodiversity and habitats; Functions related to human settlement; The heritage preserving and evidence of cultural history. Some of these functions may appear to be mutually exclusive, but even in apparently single-purpose uses there is a degree of multiple functions, cereal crop production contributes to atmospheric and hydrological regulation; urban areas include appreciable areas of trees, grass, and crop or animal production. In some cases there are more substantial overlaps. It is now recognized that agricultural land has an important role in wildlife conservation. The heritage of ancient and medieval Rome coexists with the functions of the modern city. The former concept of forests being managed exclusively for wood production, with 'keep out' regulations to outsiders, has largely been replaced by systems of multiple-use forest management. There is another 'use' of land, if it can be so called, its value for investment. In countries with unstable financial institutions and an ever-present danger of inflation, land gets bought as a store of wealth and speculative gain. It may simply be held unused, awaiting the arrival of the housing estate or office block, or let out to tenant farmers, one of whose duties is to clear the forest and so increase the value. On balance, one must hope that, after a period of being held idle, the value of such land to society is increased.
Despite the fact that cities are there some 8,000 years ago, it was only very recently that most of the world’s population have resided in dense settlements. In 1800, for example, only 2% of the world’s population resided in urban areas. No society during that time could be described as predominately urbanized as the present society. By 1900, the global share grew to approximately 14% of the world’s population and only one nation, the UK, was considered an urban society. Previous to the UK, cities in the Netherlands grew in importance but the country remained less than 40% urbanized. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, much of the developed world experienced rapid urbanization. The USA, for example, became 50% urbanized during the 1920s. It was after 1950 that the bulk of the world’s population began a rapid shift from rural to urban settlements. The postwar urban migration has been massive, intensive, and largely centered in developing countries. It was established fact that from 1950 to 2000 more than 2 billion people have moved into the world’s cities, bringing the proportion of urban population up from about 30% to more than 47%. Approximately 78% of this change occurred in less developed countries. With approximately half the world’s population currently living in dense human settlements, the next 30 years will bring greater changes than previously experienced. For example, approximately 4.9 billion of the total 8.1 billion inhabitants of the Earth will end up in cities by 2030, an additional 2 billion people from those of today. The other important attributes to the current urbanization is the rise of large urban agglomerations. The total number of large cities (i.e., those greater than 1 million) climbed from 85 in 1950 to 405 in 2000. The largest percent increase among the different sizes of cities was the “megacities” category (i.e., those equal to or greater than 10 million inhabitants). According to the UN, there was one megacity in 1950, but this number increased to 19 by 2000 and as of now it stands to 26. Of the 26 megacities in the contemporary world, 15 (i.e., 57%) are located in Asia and greater chunk of it in developing Asia (India and China).
The biggest irony of the so called rapid growth of the urbanization is that, out of all those cities, the largest share of the urban population (68%) lives in cultivated ecosystems. This is not surprising as cultivated systems accounted for 24% of the Earth’s terrestrial surface. The next largest share of the global urban population (34%) lives in dry lands. The third highest proportion of the urban population lives in coastal zone and inland waters ecosystems. As the world continues to urbanize, however, during this process humans have lost contact with land and the services it provides to sustain life. It is now well proven fact that, urban activities had immensely influenced the physical conditions and pollution levels of the land resource. Cities and urban processes have had dramatic but varying impacts on physical and biochemical properties of soil, basic resource for land use and all of which affect the life-supporting services of soils. As we continue move towards the urbanization and industrialization, our cities are developing as centers of nonagricultural production; they also introduce pollutants into the environment. Soil pollution in most cities is at levels warranting instant and urgent action. There is also the need for soil protection and remediation in areas already undergoing change as a result of urban development.
The answer to these burning issues lies in rural development, to prevent urbanizations of the society in such a rapid way. Although this is not going to be the exclusive solution for such versatile land related issues that we are facing today. Whilst there is a high level of awareness and a desire to assist among institutions, the international contribution to rural development is severely hindered by the low and recently falling level of funding. This applies in some degree to bilateral aid, assistance of one country by another, but particularly to multilateral aid, the funding of international organizations such as the UNDP, World Bank, and FAO.
Consistent with the statements of principle on the needs of the people, all the activities related to land resources should take account of social and economic considerations. Whilst there are difficulties in practice, every effort should be made to integrate physical and economic aspects. The objectives of land resource planning and management are to encourage sustainable land use, which requires: promoting land uses which are suited to the resource potential of different areas, economically viable, and socially acceptable; conserving the resource potential for the needs of the future.
So it was suggested that government need to find better linkages between survey, monitoring, and research, on the one hand, and field extension work in agriculture and forestry, on the other. This vision of national land resource policies and actions may seem highly unrealistic to those who are familiar with the institutions in our countries. With respect to the present situation, we need to take lot of path breaking decisions in this regards. Forestry departments, soil surveys, agricultural research services, and other land resource institutions are generally understaffed and receive weak support. Often they have capable senior staff but a totally inadequate operating budget, so that even basic necessities such as vehicles and equipment are lacking. Before going to the receiving end of this ever alarming land resource problem we the need to take the initiative towards a 2020 vision for land, food and the environment, simultaneously strengthening the capacity of existing institutions to perform their appropriate functions.
