Losing Ground: Land Degradation and Desertification

Land degradation is the reduction or loss of the biological or economic productivity of land resulting from land-use pressures and management practices, including the creeping conversion of fertile ground into desert. Nearly a third of India's land is already caught in this process, and the question of how to stop it, through global treaties, national missions and landscape-scale restoration, is one of the most examinable themes in GS-3.

This article defines the terms precisely, measures the scale of the damage in India and the world, traces the nine major drivers, explains the global architecture from the UNCCD to Land Degradation Neutrality, audits India's missions from the Green India Mission to the Aravalli Green Wall, and closes with the avoid-reduce-reverse strategy that UPSC expects in a way-forward.

Two words, two meanings: degradation versus desertification

Precision first. Land degradation, in the definition used by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), is the reduction or loss of the biological or economic productivity and complexity of rainfed cropland, irrigated cropland, range, pasture, forest and woodlands, resulting from a combination of pressures including land-use and management practices. It is the umbrella term: any persistent decline in what land can do.

Desertification is narrower. It is land degradation occurring specifically in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas, driven by climatic variations and human activities, producing a persistent fall in the land's biological and economic productivity. A waterlogged paddy field in a humid delta can suffer land degradation but never desertification; an overgrazed pasture on the edge of the Thar can suffer both. Drought, the third member of the trio, is a prolonged dry period that both results from and accelerates the other two. Together they form DLDD: desertification, land degradation and drought.

Why does the distinction matter for the exam? Because institutions divide along it. The UNCCD's mandate covers DLDD with emphasis on drylands, while broader degradation (mining scars, industrial wastelands, urban sprawl) is handled through national programmes. A mains answer that uses the terms interchangeably loses precision marks.

The scale of the wound

Globally, the numbers are staggering. Around 3.2 billion people, about 40 per cent of humanity, are adversely affected by land degradation; nearly 100 million hectares of healthy land are degraded every year; some 24 billion tonnes of fertile topsoil are lost annually, while nature needs up to 500 years to form a single centimetre of it; and the economic cost of land degradation and ecosystem loss runs to 6 to 10 trillion US dollars per year. Agriculture, which occupies over half of habitable land, sits at the centre: it drives about 80 per cent of global deforestation and consumes about 70 per cent of freshwater withdrawals.

India's picture comes from the Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India, prepared by ISRO's Space Applications Centre using satellite mapping. It estimates 97.85 million hectares, or 29.7 per cent of the country's total geographical area, is undergoing degradation, including 83.69 million hectares affected by desertification. Rajasthan is the worst hit, with about 62 per cent of its area undergoing desertification and land degradation. The commons are vanishing: between 2005 and 2015, grassland area shrunk 31 per cent (from 18 to 12.3 million hectares). Between 2015 and 2019 alone, 30.51 million hectares were degraded, nearly a tenth of the country's area.

The atlas also names the processes, which doubles as a ready-made drivers list for answers: water erosion (the largest), wind erosion, vegetal degradation, salinity and alkalinity, waterlogging, frost shattering and human-made degradation. More than 80 per cent of India's degraded land lies in just nine states, which is why restoration policy must be state-specific, not one-size-fits-all.

Why land degrades: the nine drivers

Unsustainable agriculture leads the list: a large share of human-induced degradation occurs on croplands and pastures, through intensive tillage, monocropping and the removal of vegetative cover. Closely linked is excessive agrochemical use: global fertiliser consumption exceeds 190 million tonnes a year, and nutrient runoff feeds over 400 marine dead zones while acidifying soils at home.

Deforestation and vegetation loss strip the land's protective skin; the world loses about 10 million hectares of forest a year in net terms (2015-2020). Overgrazing compacts soil and removes palatable grasses, contributing to more than 30 per cent of global degradation; India's shrinking commons concentrate ever more livestock on ever less pasture. Poor irrigation without drainage causes salinisation and waterlogging, which has degraded tens of millions of hectares of irrigated land worldwide.

Then come the extractive drivers. Mining and quarrying gouge landscapes directly: in parts of the Aravalli range, over a quarter of the hills have been lost to mining in some stretches. Urbanisation and infrastructure permanently seal fertile land under concrete; the world will be 68 per cent urban by 2050, with India set to add the largest number of new urban dwellers, about 416 million. Climate change intensifies the cycle, with drought frequency up 29 per cent since 2000. Finally, tenure insecurity and poverty close the trap: more than 40 per cent of degraded land sits in poverty-prone regions, and with women owning under a fifth of global land, those who manage the land often lack the rights that would reward long-term stewardship.

What it costs: from harvests to migration

The first bill arrives on the farm. Degraded soils could cut global food productivity by up to 12 per cent by mid-century and push food prices up by around 30 per cent, even as the world must feed more people. The macroeconomic bill is larger: 6.3 to 10.6 trillion dollars a year in lost ecosystem-service value (UNEP and UNCCD estimates), with individual climate disasters increasingly crossing 100 billion dollars in damages.

The ecological bills compound. Unsustainable land use is projected to release billions of tonnes of soil organic carbon between 2015 and 2030, accelerating the very warming that degrades land further. Degraded catchments cannot absorb rainfall, raising flood, drought and landslide risk; desertification injects nearly 2 billion tonnes of sand and dust into the atmosphere each year; and with 70 per cent of ice-free land altered by humans, a million species face extinction pressure.

The human bill is displacement. Environmental degradation and climate change could displace up to 1.2 billion people by 2050, with 216 million moving within their own countries. Women, who form the majority of the displaced in many contexts and own the least land, bear the heaviest burden. This is why land restoration is framed not as gardening but as security policy.

The world's answer: UNCCD and Land Degradation Neutrality

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is the sole legally binding international agreement linking environment and development to sustainable land management. Adopted in 1994 and now counting 197 parties, it targets DLDD with a focus on arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas, publishes the Global Land Outlook and the World Drought Atlas, and anchors the global restoration agenda.

Its central operating target is Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN): a state in which the amount and quality of land resources needed to support ecosystem functions remains stable or increases, meaning every hectare newly degraded is matched by a hectare restored. LDN was adopted at UNCCD COP12 in 2015 and enshrined as SDG target 15.3 (achieve a land-degradation-neutral world by 2030); over 130 countries have set voluntary LDN targets. The operational mantra is avoid, reduce, reverse: prevent degradation through land-use planning, reduce it through sustainable management, restore what is already lost.

Around this core orbit several major initiatives. The Bonn Challenge, launched in 2011, seeks to restore degraded landscapes worldwide; India pledged 13 million hectares by 2020 and 8 million more by 2030 (21 million hectares in all), later raising the total to 26 million hectares by 2030 at UNCCD COP14, which India hosted in New Delhi in 2019. The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030) aims to restore a billion hectares globally. The G20 Global Land Initiative targets halving degraded land by 2040. And Africa's Great Green Wall, launched in 2007, is restoring 100 million hectares across the Sahel, the direct inspiration for India's own green wall.

Riyadh 2024: the drought COP

The most recent milestone is UNCCD COP16, held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in December 2024, the first UNCCD COP in the Middle East. Its centre of gravity was drought resilience. The Riyadh Action Agenda created a platform to mobilise governments and non-state actors to restore 1.5 billion hectares of land by 2030, while the Riyadh Global Drought Resilience Partnership secured 12.15 billion dollars to support 80 vulnerable nations, with the Arab Coordination Group pledging up to 10 billion dollars more by 2030.

COP16 also launched Business4Land, to pull private capital into sustainable land and water management in support of LDN, and reaffirmed commitments to end discrimination against women and girls in land policy, recognising that tenure security is restoration policy. For UPSC, Riyadh matters as the moment the convention pivoted from negotiating targets to financing delivery, a shift now described as moving from institution-building to implementation.

India's fightback: the missions table

India's domestic architecture is a stack of missions, funds and drives, each attacking a different driver. The Green India Mission (GIM), one of the eight missions under the National Action Plan on Climate Change and revised in 2025 with a landscape-specific restoration push across the Aravallis, Western Ghats, Himalayas and mangroves targeting 25 million hectares by 2030, has seen over 1,019 crore rupees released till March 2026; a 2026 CAG audit, however, found only about 2 per cent of the Mission's forest-cover target met in a decade, flagging a delivery gap. The Compensatory Afforestation Fund (CAMPA) channels money collected from forest diversion into restoration, afforesting over 3.20 lakh hectares between 2020 and 2025.

For cities, the Nagar Van Yojana has developed 626 urban forests with 557.62 crore rupees released. For farms, the Soil Health Card scheme promotes balanced fertiliser use, ICAR reclamation technologies tackle saline lands with salt-tolerant crops and bio-drainage, and the Integrated Watershed Development Programme under PMKSY rebuilds catchments to check erosion and recharge groundwater. For the coasts, the National Coastal Mission (extended to 2031 with a 767-crore-rupee allocation) anchors coastal resilience, while MISHTI restored 4,536 hectares of mangroves in 2025 alone. And for mass mobilisation, Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam, launched on World Environment Day 2024, hit its 80-crore sapling target by September 2024, five days ahead of schedule.

The Aravalli test case

The flagship landscape project is the Aravalli Green Wall, India's answer to the Sahel's Great Green Wall. It envisages a 1,400-kilometre-long and 5-kilometre-wide green belt wrapped around the Aravalli range across 29 districts of Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan and Gujarat, using native species such as neem, peepal, banyan and babool, reviving 75-plus water bodies, establishing 435 nurseries with capacity for 393 lakh seedlings, and geo-tagging every plantation on the Meri LiFE portal. The Prime Minister launched it by planting a sapling at Bhagwan Mahavir Vanasthali Park in Delhi's Ridge on World Environment Day 2025.

The Aravallis need it desperately. Among the world's oldest fold mountains, they shield the Gangetic plains from the Thar's dust storms, guide monsoon winds and recharge groundwater. Yet illegal mining obliterated a quarter of Rajasthan's Aravalli hills between 1967-68 and recent decades despite Supreme Court bans in 2002 and 2009; with mining rampant outside lease boundaries and many operators extracting far beyond their leased area; and 8 per cent of the range's hills had vanished by 2019. The Green Wall is thus a live examination of whether restoration can outrun extraction, and a ready-made case study for mains answers on mining, ecology and federal enforcement.

Way forward: avoid, reduce, reverse

The strategy writes itself from the diagnosis. Avoid further degradation through scientific land-use planning that keeps forests, wetlands and prime farmland off the conversion block. Reduce ongoing damage with regenerative agriculture: zero tillage, crop diversification, agroforestry and precision irrigation that also checks salinisation. Reverse the damage already done through landscape-scale restoration corridors planted with native species, the approach behind both the Aravalli Green Wall and the Great Green Wall.

Three enablers cut across all of it. First, redirect harmful subsidies towards Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) that reward farmers for soil carbon, water recharge and biodiversity. Second, secure land tenure, especially for women and tribal communities, because nobody invests in land they may lose. Third, deploy technology and finance: AI, drones, GIS and satellite monitoring for real-time soil health tracking, and green bonds plus carbon markets to fund restoration at the scale the UN Decade demands.

The processes in numbers: what the atlas actually measures

Examiners reward answers that move from the headline 29.7 per cent to the process split, because the remedy differs by process. The Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India (2021) reported a cumulative increase of about 1.05 million hectares under desertification between the 2011 to 2013 and 2018 to 2019 frames (as of the 2021 atlas). It also records that India lost about 31 per cent, or 5.65 million hectares, of grassland area in a decade, a figure later presented to the UNCCD. Two cautions belong in every answer: state shares vary by whether the denominator is total geographical area or dryland area, and Rajasthan is consistently the most affected state, with the Thar at its core.

Soil pollution and soil organic carbon: the hidden half of land health

Soil pollution is the presence of toxic chemicals in soil at concentrations high enough to risk human health and ecosystem function. A soil pollutant is any factor that degrades soil quality, texture or mineral balance or disturbs the biological balance of soil organisms. Its sources overlap with land degradation but are not identical: untreated industrial effluents, overuse of fertilisers and pesticides such as DDT and endosulfan, non recyclable plastic accumulation, mining dust and landfill leachate. Its harms travel: pollutants move into groundwater and food chains, cut soil biodiversity and organic matter, lower crop yields and expose people through dust and food, from headaches to organ damage in severe exposures.

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is the non living organic material in the solid fraction of soil, derived from decomposed plant, animal and microbial residues. It matters out of proportion to its share because it binds soil into aggregates that improve drainage and aeration, holds water like a sponge for roots, and stores and cycles nutrients for plants and microbes. Protecting SOC is therefore both a farm strategy and a climate strategy: minimal tillage, cover cropping, compost and manure use, and afforestation all add organic matter, while protecting existing forests defends the stock already in the ground.

The constitutional frame is worth one line in any way forward. Article 21 has been read to include a right to a clean environment, Article 48A directs the State to protect and improve the environment and safeguard forests and wildlife, and Article 51A makes it a fundamental duty of every citizen to protect the natural environment. Court and citizen duty together explain why land restoration in India is argued as a rights issue, not only a productivity issue.

Rules in flux and practices that worked

Two recent regulatory shifts show how contested restoration remains. The Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Amendment Rules, 2025, issued by the environment ministry, allowed working permission after Stage I approval for linear projects such as roads and transmission lines, made notification of compensatory afforestation land as Protected Forest optional rather than mandatory, and extended the rules to critical and strategic minerals under the mines law. Draft guidelines discussed in January 2026 proposed reclassifying private plantations as forestry assets exempted from Net Present Value charges. Supporters argue this will crowd in industrial forestry and supply chains; critics warn it weakens ecological safeguards. Quote the tension, do not take a side without evidence.

Against that caution, three field practices show what success requires. In Jamni village, Telangana, families cultivated vegetable gardens on plots smaller than half an acre using dung, household waste and ash as organic fertilisers, rebuilding soil without purchased inputs. In Ghana, community groups trained in sustainable land management prepared participatory land use plans and restored about 30 hectares of degraded woodland. In Cuba, drought resistant varieties combined with contour planting and crop rotation brought about 210 hectares under sustainable management. The common thread is tenure plus technique: communities invest when they are secure and when the practice pays within a season, not only in a decade.

Key Terms

• Land degradation: Land degradation is the long-term decline in the productive capacity of land, reducing its ability to support crops, forests, grazing or ecosystem services. It is caused by soil erosion, salinisation and waterlogging from poor irrigation, deforestation, overgrazing, mining, urbanisation and the overuse of chemical inputs. In India it is tracked through the Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas published by ISRO, which has found roughly a third of the country's land showing degradation trends, with direct consequences for farm incomes, food security and climate resilience. Example: In the Indo-Gangetic plains, intensive rice-wheat cultivation with flood irrigation has caused waterlogging and secondary salinisation in canal command areas, a classic case of human-induced land degradation.
• UNCCD: UNCCD stands for the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, one of the three Rio Conventions adopted after the 1992 Earth Summit alongside the climate and biodiversity conventions. It is the only legally binding global framework addressing desertification, land degradation and drought, built around national action programmes and the principles of participation, partnership and decentralisation. Its parties meet periodically to review progress toward land degradation neutrality by 2030. Example: India's commitment under the convention to achieve land degradation neutrality by 2030.
• Land Degradation Neutrality: Land Degradation Neutrality is the global goal of achieving no net loss of healthy and productive land, adopted under the UN Convention to Combat Desertification at its COP12 in 2015. It works on a counterbalancing logic: land newly degraded by erosion, deforestation, salinisation or unsustainable farming must be matched by restoring an equivalent area elsewhere. It is the mechanism behind Sustainable Development Goal target 15.3, which calls for a land-degradation-neutral world by 2030, and over 130 countries have set voluntary national targets under it. Example: At the UNCCD COP14 hosted in New Delhi in 2019, India pledged to restore 26 million hectares of degraded land by 2030, its national commitment under the Land Degradation Neutrality framework.
• Green India Mission: The Green India Mission is one of the eight missions under the National Action Plan on Climate Change, launched to expand and improve India's forest and tree cover. It combines afforestation and reforestation with livelihood support for forest-dependent communities, aiming at ecosystem restoration and carbon sequestration together. For UPSC, it is a standard GS-3 environment answer point on India's climate policy, linking forests, adaptation and community participation. Example: Its launch in 2014 as part of the NAPCC, alongside the Solar Mission and the Water Mission.
• Aravalli Green Wall: The Aravalli Green Wall Project, launched in March 2023, aims to create a five-kilometre-wide green buffer around the Aravalli range across Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, and Delhi to check desertification and land degradation. Inspired by Africa's Great Green Wall, it targets restoration of 1.15 million hectares of degraded land by 2027 through native afforestation, water body rejuvenation, and community participation. It was announced in the Union Budget 2023-24 and aligns with India's UNCCD commitment to restore 26 million hectares by 2030. Example: The detailed action plan envisages restoring over eight lakh hectares of recorded forest area in the first phase at an estimated cost of about Rs 16,000 crore.
• Desertification: Desertification is the degradation of land in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas, driven by climatic variations and human activities such as overgrazing, deforestation and unsustainable farming. It reduces soil fertility and biodiversity and threatens livelihoods. For UPSC environment questions it matters through the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, India's pledge to restore 26 million hectares of degraded land by 2030, and schemes like the Green India Mission. Example: India hosted COP14 of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification in New Delhi in 2019, where it raised its land-restoration target to 26 million hectares.
• arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas: Arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas are the three climatic zones classified by the aridity index (the ratio of precipitation to potential evapotranspiration) that together constitute the world's drylands. Arid areas receive very little rainfall relative to evaporation, semi-arid areas slightly more, and dry sub-humid areas enough for rainfed agriculture but with recurrent drought risk. These drylands are the core mandate of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification and are disproportionately vulnerable to desertification, land degradation and drought. Example: The Thar region of Rajasthan is arid, much of the Deccan plateau is semi-arid, and parts of eastern Madhya Pradesh fall in the dry sub-humid zone.
• Drought: Drought is a prolonged period of abnormally low rainfall relative to the long-term average for a region, causing water scarcity that affects agriculture, drinking water supply, hydrology and ecosystems. It is classified into meteorological drought (rainfall deficit), agricultural drought (soil-moisture deficit harming crops), hydrological drought (falling groundwater and reservoir levels) and socio-economic drought. India declares agricultural drought using criteria such as rainfall deviation, crop sown area and soil-moisture indices. Example: Marathwada in Maharashtra suffered a severe agricultural drought in 2015-16 after consecutive monsoon failures, leading to crop loss and water-train relief operations.
• DLDD: DLDD is the acronym for Desertification, Land Degradation and Drought, the three interlinked land crises addressed together by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). It treats desertification (land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas), broader land degradation, and drought as one combined challenge because they share drivers such as climate change, unsustainable land use and water stress. The DLDD framing underpins the UNCCD's 2018-2030 Strategic Framework and national reporting toward Sustainable Development Goal 15.3 on land degradation neutrality. Example: UNCCD COP16 in Riyadh (December 2024) centred its negotiations on DLDD, including drought resilience and financing for land restoration.
• Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India: The Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India is the national assessment published by ISRO's Space Applications Centre (SAC), Ahmedabad, in 2021, mapping degraded land using satellite data. It found that 97.85 million hectares, or 29.77 percent of India's total geographical area, underwent land degradation during 2018-19, with wind erosion, water erosion and vegetation degradation as the leading processes. Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Ladakh account for the largest degraded areas. Example: Rajasthan alone accounts for over 21 million hectares of degraded land, mainly from wind erosion in its arid zones.
• ISRO's Space Applications Centre: The Space Applications Centre (SAC) at Ahmedabad is one of ISRO's major research and development centres. It designs and builds the communication, remote sensing and navigation payloads flown on Indian satellites, along with the ground systems and applications that turn satellite data into usable services. Example: SAC-built payloads fly on the INSAT and IRS satellite series that serve Indian communication and Earth observation needs.
• Rajasthan: Rajasthan is India's largest state by area, and its western districts are covered by the Thar Desert. It is one of India's worst-affected zones for land degradation and desertification, driven by wind erosion, water erosion and overgrazing. The state is therefore central to India's restoration push, including the Aravalli Green Wall corridor along the Aravalli range. Example: The Aravalli Green Wall project aims to plant a green corridor along the Aravallis across Rajasthan, Haryana, Gujarat and Delhi to halt the eastward spread of desertification.
• water erosion: Water erosion is the wearing away and transport of soil by the action of water, including rain splash, sheet erosion, rill erosion, gully erosion, and stream bank cutting. It strips away fertile topsoil, silts up reservoirs and reduces their storage capacity, and is accelerated by deforestation, overgrazing, and poor tillage practices on slopes. Contour bunding, terracing, and vegetative cover are standard measures used to check it. Example: The Chambal ravines of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan are a classic Indian case of severe gully erosion caused by water.
• wind erosion: Wind erosion is the removal and transport of soil particles by wind, most severe in arid and semi-arid regions where vegetation cover is sparse and soils are dry and loose. It carries away fine, fertile soil as dust storms, abrades crops, and deposits sand as dunes, and it is accelerated by overgrazing and the removal of vegetative barriers. Shelterbelts, windbreaks, and stubble retention are standard measures used to control it. Example: The Thar Desert's shifting sands are the textbook Indian case of wind erosion and desertification.
• vegetal degradation: Vegetal degradation is the loss of vegetation cover and plant productivity in an area, and is one of the key components of land degradation recognised by the UNCCD. It is driven by deforestation, overgrazing, shifting cultivation, and fires, and it reduces soil organic matter, disrupts the water cycle, and accelerates soil erosion, creating a feedback loop that makes recovery harder. Vegetal degradation is closely monitored through satellite vegetation indices in India's desertification assessments. Example: Overgrazing-driven thinning of scrub vegetation along the Aravalli fringe has been cited in India's desertification and land degradation reports as worsening pressure on Rajasthan's drylands.
• salinity and alkalinity: Salinity is a high concentration of neutral soluble salts in soil, measured by electrical conductivity, while alkalinity, or sodicity, is an excess of sodium carbonate and bicarbonate that disperses clay particles and raises soil pH. Both forms of salt-affected soil reduce fertility, but they need different remedies: saline soils are reclaimed by leaching salts out with good drainage, while alkaline soils are treated with gypsum and organic amendments before leaching. Accurate diagnosis matters because the wrong treatment can worsen the damage. Example: Sodic (alkaline) soils of the Indo-Gangetic plain are reclaimed by applying gypsum followed by leaching.
• waterlogging: Waterlogging is the saturation of soil with water so that the water table rises to or above the root zone, depriving plant roots of oxygen and sharply reducing crop yields. It is commonly caused by excessive canal irrigation, poor drainage, and seepage from unlined canals, and is often accompanied by salinisation as dissolved salts are drawn upward by evaporation. Sub-surface drainage and conjunctive use of surface and groundwater are standard remedies. Example: Seepage from the Indira Gandhi Canal has caused extensive waterlogging and soil salinity in parts of Rajasthan's command area.
• Unsustainable agriculture: Unsustainable agriculture refers to farming practices that raise short term output but degrade the natural resource base, soil, water and biodiversity, on which future production depends. It includes excessive groundwater pumping, indiscriminate chemical fertiliser and pesticide use, monocropping, and stubble burning, which cause soil salinisation, falling water tables and greenhouse gas emissions. For UPSC, it is the core of the food security versus ecological security debate in Indian agriculture. Example: In Punjab and Haryana, decades of paddy wheat monoculture with free electricity for tubewells have driven water tables down by several metres, while stubble burning every October to November chokes north India with smog.
• excessive agrochemical use: The over-application of synthetic fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides and fungicides beyond agronomically recommended doses. It degrades soil health by destroying microbial life and organic matter, acidifies or salinises soils, contaminates groundwater with nitrates, drives eutrophication of water bodies and breeds pesticide-resistant pests and weeds. For UPSC, it is the key critique of input-intensive agriculture and the argument for natural farming, integrated pest management and soil health cards. Example: The Green Revolution belts of Punjab and Haryana, where decades of heavy urea and pesticide use have caused soil fatigue, groundwater contamination and stagnating yields.
• Deforestation and vegetation loss: Deforestation and vegetation loss is the clearing or degradation of forests and plant cover, one of the principal drivers of land degradation identified in India's desertification assessments. Removing vegetation exposes soil to wind and water erosion, disrupts the local water cycle, depletes soil organic carbon and destroys habitat, accelerating desertification in vulnerable drylands. India's monitoring attributes a significant share of degraded area to vegetation degradation, alongside water erosion, wind erosion and salinisation. Example: Unregulated tree felling and mining in the Aravalli hills have been flagged as a driver of land degradation in Rajasthan.
• Overgrazing: The consumption of vegetation by livestock beyond the land's carrying capacity, which removes ground cover, compacts the soil and prevents regeneration of grasses and shrubs. It is a direct driver of land degradation and desertification, accelerating soil erosion, nutrient loss and the spread of invasive, unpalatable species. Managed rotational grazing is the standard remedy. Example: Overgrazing by livestock in the semi-arid fringes of the Thar is a documented contributor to advancing desertification in Rajasthan.
• Poor irrigation: Poor irrigation means water applied to fields in ways that damage soil and waste water, such as excessive flood irrigation without drainage or using saline groundwater. Over time it causes waterlogging, which drowns roots, and salinisation, where evaporating water leaves salts behind and turns fertile land barren. Example: Parts of the Indira Gandhi Canal command in Rajasthan developed waterlogging and salinity because canal irrigation expanded faster than drainage.
• salinisation and waterlogging: Salinisation is the accumulation of soluble salts in the soil root zone, and waterlogging is the saturation of that zone with water so that plant roots are starved of oxygen. Both are classic side effects of canal irrigation in arid and semi-arid regions without adequate drainage, and both sharply cut crop yields. Together they represent one of the costliest environmental consequences of unscientific irrigation. Example: Large tracts of canal-command areas in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan suffer from secondary salinisation and waterlogging.
• Mining and quarrying: Mining is the extraction of minerals, coal, or metals from the earth through surface (open-cast) or underground workings, while quarrying is the open-pit extraction of stone, sand, gravel, and aggregates used mainly in construction. Both strip vegetation and topsoil, fracture rock beds, and generate dust, overburden dumps, and acid mine drainage, making them major drivers of land degradation and desertification in India. They also deplete and contaminate groundwater, and unregulated quarrying scars hillsides and riverbeds. Example: Unregulated iron-ore mining in Karnataka's Ballari district in the 2000s stripped forests and farmland, leading to a Supreme Court-ordered mining ban.
• Aravalli: The Aravalli range is one of the world's oldest fold mountain systems, running about 700 km from Gujarat through Rajasthan and Haryana to Delhi. It acts as a natural barrier against the eastward expansion of the Thar desert, recharges groundwater, and gives rise to rivers such as the Chambal, Sabarmati, and Luni. Mining, deforestation, and encroachment have severely degraded it, making its restoration a national priority. Example: The Delhi Ridge, the capital's green lungs, is the northernmost extension of the Aravallis and is the focus of restoration under the Aravalli Green Wall project.
• Urbanisation and infrastructure: Urbanisation and infrastructure refers to the linked processes of rapid city growth and the building of roads, housing, water supply, drainage and transport networks that cities need to function. In India, where urbanisation is still accelerating, the challenge is that infrastructure expansion often consumes farmland, wetlands and forests, fragments habitats and locks in high carbon, car dependent layouts for decades. Sustainable urban planning therefore emphasises compact cities, public transport, green buildings and nature based drainage. Example: The conversion of Bengaluru's lake beds and stormwater drains into built up layouts is widely cited as a driver of the city's recurring urban floods.
• climate change: Climate change is the long-term shift in global temperatures and weather patterns, driven since the industrial era chiefly by greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, deforestation and industry. Its features are rising temperatures, sea-level rise and extreme weather. It matters for UPSC because GS-3 covers mitigation and adaptation, India's Panchamrit pledges and climate finance debates, all anchored by IPCC assessments. Example: the Paris Agreement (2015)
• tenure insecurity and poverty: Tenure insecurity is the lack of secure, legally recognised rights over land, and it is both a cause and a consequence of poverty. People who cannot prove ownership avoid long-term investments such as soil conservation or tree planting, and they can be displaced by more powerful claimants. Because degraded land lowers productivity and incomes, insecure tenure feeds a cycle of land degradation and deepening poverty. Example: The Forest Rights Act, 2006 was enacted partly to correct historical injustice by recognising the land and forest rights of tribal and forest-dwelling communities.
• Global Land Outlook: The Global Land Outlook is the flagship assessment report of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) on the state of land degradation worldwide and pathways to restoration. Its second edition, released in 2022, assessed land degradation trends and the economics of land restoration. Example: The second Global Land Outlook (2022) warned that up to 40 per cent of the world's land is degraded, threatening food security and livelihoods.
• World Drought Atlas: The World Drought Atlas is a global assessment of drought risks and solutions launched in December 2024 by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) together with the European Commission's Joint Research Centre at UNCCD COP16 in Riyadh. Using maps, infographics and case studies, it shows drought as a systemic hazard whose cascading effects hit agriculture, energy, trade, ecosystems and public health, and it calls for national drought plans and proactive, people-centred resilience action. It warns that droughts have increased by 29% since 2000 and could affect 75% of the world's population by 2050. Example: The 2022-23 drought that affected Barcelona's water supply and the US Great Plains wheat belt is the kind of cross-sector case the Atlas documents.
• COP12: In the article's context, the 12th Conference of the Parties to the UNCCD, held in Ankara in 2015, where Land Degradation Neutrality was adopted as the convention's headline goal. LDN, the aim of no net loss of healthy productive land, was then enshrined as SDG target 15.3. Note that the CBD also held a COP12 in 2014, so UPSC answers should always specify the convention. Example: Land Degradation Neutrality was adopted at UNCCD COP12 in Ankara in 2015.
• SDG target 15.3: SDG target 15.3 commits countries to combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world by 2030. The land degradation neutrality concept was adopted at UNCCD COP12 in 2015, and over 130 countries have since set voluntary neutrality targets. The operational mantra is avoid, reduce and reverse degradation. Example: India's pledge under the Bonn Challenge to restore 26 million hectares of degraded land by 2030 is its contribution to SDG target 15.3.
• avoid, reduce, reverse: 'Avoid, reduce, reverse' is the response hierarchy of the UNCCD's conceptual framework for Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN), based on the principle that prevention is better than cure. The top priority is to avoid degradation of still-intact landscapes through planning and regulation, the second is to reduce ongoing degradation through sustainable land management, and the third is to reverse past degradation through restoration and rehabilitation. The sequencing reflects that avoiding and reducing degradation is generally more cost-effective than repairing already degraded land. Example: Protecting a healthy grassland from conversion (avoid), applying soil-conservation practices on farmland (reduce), and replanting a mined-out site (reverse) together achieve LDN.
• Bonn Challenge: A global voluntary effort launched in 2011 to restore degraded and deforested landscapes, anchored by IUCN and Germany. Countries announce their own restoration pledges, contributing to shared global targets for bringing degraded land back into productivity. It feeds into Land Degradation Neutrality and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021 to 2030). Example: India's Bonn Challenge pledge was to restore 13 million hectares by 2020 and 8 million more by 2030.
• COP14: The 14th Conference of the Parties to the UNCCD, hosted by India in New Delhi in 2019. It produced the Delhi Declaration and saw India raise its Bonn Challenge land-restoration pledge from 21 to 26 million hectares by 2030. Hosting it positioned India as a leader on desertification action. Example: At UNCCD COP14 in New Delhi (2019), India raised its land-restoration pledge to 26 million hectares by 2030.
• G20 Global Land Initiative: The G20 Global Land Initiative is a G20 programme on reducing land degradation and enhancing conservation of terrestrial habitats, launched at the Riyadh Summit in November 2020. Its ambition is to prevent, halt and reverse land degradation and achieve a 50 percent reduction in degraded land by 2040, implemented with an initiative coordination office under the UN Convention to Combat Desertification in Bonn. It works on a voluntary basis through knowledge sharing, private sector engagement and showcasing restoration success stories. Example: India's Aravalli Green Wall and its Bonn Challenge pledge of restoring 26 million hectares by 2030 align with the initiative's land restoration ambition.
• Great Green Wall: The Great Green Wall is an African Union-led initiative, launched in 2007, to combat desertification and land degradation across the Sahel. It aims to restore a mosaic of forests, farmland and pasture across 8,000 km from Dakar (Senegal) to Djibouti, with a target of 100 million hectares restored by 2030. Beyond ecology, it is framed as a climate-adaptation, food-security and jobs programme for one of the world's most vulnerable regions. Example: Countries such as Senegal and Ethiopia have reported millions of hectares of degraded land brought back under restoration through the initiative.
• UNCCD COP16: UNCCD COP16 was the sixteenth Conference of the Parties to the desertification convention, held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in December 2024, the first UNCCD COP hosted in the Middle East and North Africa region. It mobilised over USD 12 billion for land restoration and drought resilience, including the Riyadh Global Drought Resilience Partnership, but failed to agree on a binding global drought protocol, deferring that decision to COP17 in Mongolia. It highlighted the finance gap, with the UNCCD estimating USD 2.6 trillion needed by 2030. Example: The Riyadh Global Drought Resilience Partnership, which secured USD 12.15 billion to support 80 of the world's most vulnerable countries.
• Riyadh Action Agenda: The Riyadh Action Agenda was launched at UNCCD COP16 in Riyadh in December 2024 as a platform to mobilise governments, businesses and other non-state actors for land restoration. Its stated goal is to rally action to restore 1.5 billion hectares of degraded land by 2030. It reflects the conference's centre of gravity on drought resilience and large-scale restoration. Example: The agenda brings private companies into land restoration, since the private sector currently funds only a small share of such work.
• Riyadh Global Drought Resilience Partnership: The Riyadh Global Drought Resilience Partnership was launched at UNCCD COP16 in December 2024 to finance drought resilience in vulnerable countries. It attracted commitments of 12.15 billion dollars to support 80 of the world's most drought-vulnerable countries, including a 10 billion dollar pledge from the Arab Coordination Group. It was the largest single financial outcome of the conference. Example: The partnership channels funds into early-warning systems, drought-resistant agriculture and water management in the 80 supported countries.
• Business4Land: A UNCCD initiative launched at its COP16 in Riyadh in 2024 to draw private-sector capital and corporate action into sustainable land and water management. It responds to the large finance gap for land restoration and Land Degradation Neutrality by engaging businesses as restoration partners. For UPSC it illustrates the push for private finance in desertification control. Example: Business4Land was launched at UNCCD COP16 in Riyadh to mobilise corporate investment in land restoration.
• Nagar Van Yojana: Nagar Van Yojana is a Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change scheme launched in 2020 to create and develop urban forests ('Nagar Vans') in cities across India. It aims to provide clean air, recreation space, and biodiversity within urban areas, implemented with state forest departments and municipal bodies, with central funding released for hundreds of projects. It is part of India's urban greening and land-degradation response. Example: Over 600 Nagar Vans have been developed across Indian cities under the scheme.
• Soil Health Card: The Soil Health Card is a report issued to farmers under the Soil Health Card Scheme, launched on 19 February 2015 at Suratgarh, Rajasthan. It gives the nutrient status of a farmer's soil across 12 parameters (macronutrients N, P, K, S; micronutrients Zn, Fe, Cu, Mn, B; plus pH, electrical conductivity and organic carbon) along with recommended fertilizer doses, issued once every two years. The aim is to promote balanced, soil-test-based fertilizer use, cutting costs and checking soil degradation from excess urea; since 2022-23 the scheme has been merged into Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana as the 'Soil Health and Fertility' component. Example: A farmer in Punjab using the card's recommendation to reduce urea and add zinc and sulphur, lowering input costs while sustaining wheat yields.
• ICAR: The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) is the apex body for coordinating, guiding and managing research and education in agriculture, animal husbandry, fisheries and allied sciences in India. Established in 1929 (originally as the Imperial Council of Agricultural Research), it runs a vast network of research institutes and agricultural universities across the country. Example: ICAR coordinates premier institutes such as the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi, which develops crop varieties used across Indian farms.
• Integrated Watershed Development Programme: A government programme for soil and water conservation through integrated watershed management in degraded and rainfed areas, now implemented as the Watershed Development Component of the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (WDC-PMKSY) after the earlier Integrated Watershed Management Programme was subsumed into PMKSY. It combines soil conservation, water harvesting, afforestation and livelihood support to restore degraded lands and improve farm productivity. Example: Watershed projects under WDC-PMKSY build check dams, farm ponds and contour bunds to recharge groundwater and arrest land degradation.
• PMKSY: Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana, launched in 2015, is the umbrella irrigation scheme with the motto Har Khet Ko Pani (water to every field). It converges the Accelerated Irrigation Benefits Programme, the Integrated Watershed Management Programme and on-farm water management, focusing on expanding assured irrigation, improving water-use efficiency and watershed development. The Per Drop More Crop micro-irrigation component is part of it. Example: PMKSY's watershed projects in drought-prone districts combine check dams, farm ponds and drip irrigation to raise water availability per hectare.
• National Coastal Mission: The National Coastal Mission is a Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change programme focused on the protection and restoration of India's coastal and marine ecosystems, including mangroves, seagrass beds and coral reefs. It addresses pressures such as coastal erosion, pollution and sea-level rise along India's long coastline through habitat restoration and community involvement. It complements other coastal initiatives such as the Mangrove Initiative for Shoreline Habitats and Tangible Incomes (MISHTI). Example: Under the programme, 4,536 hectares of mangroves have been restored along India's coasts.
• MISHTI: The Mangrove Initiative for Shoreline Habitats and Tangible Incomes, announced in the Union Budget 2023-24 and launched on World Environment Day, 5 June 2023. It aims to restore and expand mangroves over approximately 540 sq km across 9 states and 3 union territories over five years (2023-28), implemented through convergence with MGNREGS, CAMPA and state plans, with gap funding from National CAMPA. Example: Under MISHTI, Gujarat has taken up the largest share of restoration work, with thousands of hectares of degraded mangroves being replanted along its coast.
• Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam: Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam (One Tree in the Name of Mother) is a national tree-plantation campaign launched by the Prime Minister on World Environment Day, 5 June 2024. It urges every citizen to plant a tree in honour of their mother, blending an emotional appeal with the goal of raising India's green cover toward the target of 33 percent of the geographical area. The campaign set an ambitious target of planting 140 crore saplings, with states, schools and ministries running coordinated plantation drives. Example: Schools and government offices across states organised mass plantation drives under the campaign in the 2024 monsoon season.
• Meri LiFE portal: A digital platform of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change under Mission LiFE (Lifestyle for Environment), launched in May 2023. The portal enables ministries, institutions and citizens to upload event reports, geo-tag activities and track the progress of the nationwide mass mobilisation for sustainable lifestyles. It is paired with the Meri LiFE mobile app that nudges youth through gamified pro-planet tasks. Example: Plantations under the Aravalli Green Wall project are geo-tagged and reported on the Meri LiFE portal to make afforestation progress publicly verifiable.
• World Environment Day 2025: World Environment Day is the United Nations' principal global outreach day for environmental action, celebrated every 5 June since 1974 and coordinated by the UN Environment Programme. The 2025 edition was hosted by the Republic of Korea (which previously hosted in 1997) under the theme of ending plastic pollution, urging collective action to cut plastic waste leaking into ecosystems. It is the world's largest platform for public environmental engagement, with each year pairing a host country with the most pressing environmental theme. Example: The 2024 edition was hosted by Saudi Arabia on land restoration and drought resilience, while the 2025 Republic of Korea edition pushed the #BeatPlasticPollution campaign ahead of global plastic treaty talks.
• Avoid: Avoid is the first step of the avoid, reduce, reverse response hierarchy for land degradation neutrality adopted under the UNCCD: avoid means preventing new degradation through scientific land-use planning that keeps forests, wetlands and prime farmland off the conversion list.
• reduce: Reduce is the second step of the avoid, reduce, reverse response hierarchy for land degradation neutrality: reduce means limiting ongoing degradation through sustainable land management, between avoiding new degradation and reversing what is already lost.
• Reverse: Reverse is the third step of the avoid, reduce, reverse response hierarchy for land degradation neutrality adopted under the UNCCD. While avoid prevents new degradation and reduce limits ongoing damage, reverse means actively restoring land that is already degraded. It is achieved through measures such as reforestation, soil rehabilitation and landscape-scale restoration corridors planted with native species. Example: The Aravalli Green Wall and Africa's Great Green Wall are reverse strategies, restoring degraded landscapes with large-scale native planting.
• redirect harmful subsidies: Redirecting harmful subsidies means shifting public money away from subsidies that damage land, water and biodiversity toward incentives that restore them. Fertiliser, pesticide, fossil-fuel and water subsidies often encourage overuse and degradation; repurposing them for sustainable practices is a core recommendation of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. India's moves such as promoting neem-coated urea and soil-health cards partly reflect this logic. Example: Shifting support from blanket chemical-fertiliser subsidies toward incentives for soil-health practices and natural farming under desertification-control programmes.
• secure land tenure: Secure land tenure is the legal certainty that a person or community's rights to land will be recognised and protected, so the land cannot be arbitrarily taken away. It encourages investment in soil conservation, tree planting and productivity, and it strengthens the bargaining power of small farmers and tribal communities. It is a target under SDG 1.4 and a focus of India's land-record digitisation drives. Example: The SVAMITVA scheme maps rural inhabited land with drones to give property owners formal title documents.
• deploy technology and finance: In land-degradation policy, the prescription to back restoration targets with two enablers: modern monitoring technology (AI, drones, GIS and satellite tracking of soil health in real time) and large-scale funding (green bonds, carbon markets and dedicated restoration finance). The phrase captures the shift from paper targets to measurable, financed action, especially under the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030). Example: The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030) calls for exactly this combination: technology-driven monitoring plus scaled-up restoration finance.
• CAMPA: CAMPA is the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority, set up under the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act, 2016. It manages the money that user agencies pay when forest land is diverted for non-forest purposes under the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, and channels it into afforestation and forest regeneration. National and state CAMPAs hold these funds. For UPSC, it connects development projects, forest conservation and environmental compensation mechanisms. Example: A mining or highway project diverting forest land must deposit compensatory afforestation money into the CAMPA fund.
• Bonn Challenge pledge: The specific national commitment a country makes under the Bonn Challenge, stating how much degraded land it will restore by a target year. India's pledge began at 13 million hectares by 2020 plus 8 million more by 2030, and was raised to 26 million hectares by 2030 when India hosted UNCCD COP14 in New Delhi in 2019. The figure is a standard UPSC prelims fact. Example: At UNCCD COP14 in New Delhi (2019), India raised its Bonn Challenge pledge to 26 million hectares of restoration by 2030.
• IWMP under PMKSY: The Integrated Watershed Management Programme (IWMP), launched in 2009-10, restores degraded rainfed land through soil and water conservation, groundwater recharge and community watershed committees. In 2015-16 it was amalgamated as the Watershed Development Component of the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (WDC-PMKSY), continued as WDC-PMKSY 2.0 for 2021 to 2026 with a target of 49.50 lakh hectares of degraded land. Example: Watershed projects under the programme build check dams, contour bunds and percolation tanks to recharge groundwater in rainfed districts.
• Key takeaways: Key takeaways is a quick-revision summary box placed at the end of each article, listing the most exam-relevant points in a short numbered list. It distils definitions, dates, figures, provisions and examples into a form suited for last-minute revision before Prelims and Mains. Together with the article's practice questions, it turns every topic into a self-contained study unit.
• Definitions: In the desertification and land-degradation literature, 'definitions' refers to the precise, internationally agreed meanings of desertification, land degradation and drought set by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). The UNCCD defines desertification narrowly as land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from climatic variations and human activities, while land degradation is the broader loss of the biological or economic productivity of land. Getting these definitions right matters because they decide what counts as degraded land in national assessments. Example: The Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India applies the UNCCD definitions to classify 97.85 million hectares as degraded during 2018-19.
• Scale: In the land degradation context, scale refers to the measured magnitude of degradation in India: 105.48 million hectares, or 32.07 per cent of the country's land, is degraded according to ISRO's Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas. Rajasthan is the worst affected at 61.2 per cent, about 30.51 million hectares degraded during 2015-19 alone, and grassland productivity fell 31 per cent. These headline numbers make land degradation a measurable, exam-ready crisis rather than an abstract concern.
• Causes: In the context of land degradation and desertification, 'causes' refers to the human and natural drivers that strip land of its productive capacity. The main drivers are intensive agriculture with heavy agrochemical use, overgrazing, deforestation, mining, soil salinisation from faulty irrigation, urban expansion, and climatic stress such as more frequent droughts. India's Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas attributes roughly 105 million hectares, about a third of the country, to such degradation. Example: Over-irrigation without drainage in parts of Punjab and Haryana has caused waterlogging and salinity, rendering farmland unproductive.
• Consequences: In the context of land degradation and desertification, consequences are the knock-on harms that follow the loss of healthy land. They include declining agricultural productivity and food security, economic losses that the UNCCD warns could reach USD 23 trillion by 2050, release of soil carbon that accelerates climate change, and greater vulnerability to floods and dust storms. Because up to 40 percent of the world's land is degraded, these consequences fall hardest on rural and poor communities that depend directly on the land. Example: The UNCCD's Global Land Outlook warns that continued land degradation could shrink global food production by up to 12 percent by 2050, pushing food prices higher.
• LDN explained: LDN explained is a plain-language explainer of Land Degradation Neutrality, the global goal of achieving no net loss of healthy and productive land. It sets out the idea that land degraded by erosion, deforestation or poor farming should be balanced by restoring an equal area elsewhere, keeping the total stock of productive land stable. Adopted under the UN Convention to Combat Desertification at COP12 in 2015, it is the mechanism behind Sustainable Development Goal target 15.3. The explainer walks through the concept, its adoption and how countries set voluntary national targets.
• Response audit: A response audit is a structured stock-taking of the measures taken against land degradation, checking what is being done to avoid, reduce and reverse it. In India's case it maps programmes such as the Green India Mission and CAMPA (which restore degraded land), the Soil Health Card scheme (which reduces ongoing degradation) and the Aravalli Green Wall (which reverses damage at scale). It answers the policy question of whether responses match the scale of the problem. Example: India's response audit for land degradation neutrality covers restoration schemes like Nagar Van for urban green cover alongside large programmes like the Green India Mission.
• Gaps: In the context of land restoration, 'gaps' refers to the implementation gaps that hold back India's efforts to meet land-degradation neutrality targets: fragmented mandates across agencies, weak monitoring of outcomes, insecure land tenure, missing private finance, and restoration efforts reduced to monoculture plantations rather than ecological recovery.
• Way forward: In UPSC mains answers, essays and policy discussions, the way forward is the concluding section that moves from analysis to concrete, actionable recommendations for solving the problem discussed. A strong way forward is specific and implementable, naming institutions, reforms, technologies or timelines, rather than repeating generic calls for awareness. Examiners reward answers that end with a realistic, multi stakeholder roadmap instead of stopping at criticism. Example: A way forward on urban flooding could propose sponge city designs, strict protection of wetlands as natural sponges, and real time flood warning systems run by municipal corporations.
• Ecological role: An ecological role is the function that a species, population or habitat performs within its ecosystem, such as pollination by bees, decomposition by fungi, or flood control by wetlands. It captures what an organism or habitat does for the working of the ecosystem rather than just what it is. Understanding ecological roles helps conservation prioritise species and habitats whose loss would disrupt whole ecosystems, known as keystone roles. Example: Mangroves play the ecological role of nursery grounds for fish and natural barriers against storm surges.
• The wound: In the article's context, the wound is the environmental damage inflicted on Rajasthan's Aravalli hills by decades of mining: roughly a quarter of the Aravalli hill cover lost since 1967-68, with only 288 of 4,150 mining leases holding environmental clearance despite Supreme Court bans in 2002 and 2009. The metaphor captures how one of the world's oldest mountain ranges has been scarred even as it shields the National Capital Region from Thar dust storms and recharges groundwater. It illustrates the gap between legal protection on paper and extraction on the ground. Example: The Supreme Court's 2002 and 2009 orders banning mining in the Aravalli region, which large numbers of leases continued to defy.
• The Green Wall: The Green Wall refers to India's Aravalli Green Wall Project, an initiative to build a roughly 1,400 km long and 5 km wide belt of native vegetation around the Aravalli hills across Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Delhi. It aims to check desertification and halt the eastward spread of the Thar desert through afforestation with native species, rejuvenation of water bodies and community participation. The project is modelled on Africa's Great Green Wall in the Sahel. Example: Africa's Great Green Wall, launched by the African Union in 2007 with the goal of restoring 100 million hectares of degraded Sahelian land by 2030.
• Examine: Examine is a UPSC mains directive word that asks the candidate to probe an issue in depth, weighing evidence, causes, consequences and different perspectives before reaching a reasoned conclusion. Unlike a mere description, it demands analysis of strengths and weaknesses along with a balanced judgement. Answers typically follow an introduction, multi-dimensional analysis and conclusion structure. Example: A mains question asks: Examine with reference to the Aravalli Green Wall initiative (250 words, 15 marks).
• United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD): The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in Those Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, Particularly in Africa, is the Rio Convention dedicated to land. Adopted in 1994 and in force since 1996, it is the only legally binding international agreement linking environment and development to sustainable land management, with a global goal of land degradation neutrality by 2030. Its core instrument is the national action programme prepared by each affected country with community participation. Example: Africa's Great Green Wall initiative in the Sahel, which advances the convention's land restoration agenda across 11 founding countries.
• UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030): The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration is a ten-year global call to action led by UNEP and the FAO to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems on every continent and in every ocean. It channels science, finance and grassroots action toward commitments such as the Bonn Challenge and the Kunming-Montreal biodiversity framework, with progress tracked through national restoration pledges. The decade frames restoration as central to climate, biodiversity and livelihood goals alike. Example: India's pledge to restore 26 million hectares of degraded land by 2030 under the Bonn Challenge.
• Compensatory Afforestation Fund (CAMPA): The Compensatory Afforestation Fund is the pool of money collected from user agencies that divert forest land for non-forest purposes under the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980. The levies, including charges for compensatory afforestation and the Net Present Value of the diverted forest, were held by an ad hoc CAMPA after a 2001 Supreme Court order, and were brought under statutory national and state funds by the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act, 2016. The fund is meant to finance afforestation, regeneration of degraded forests, wildlife protection and forest infrastructure; 90 percent goes to the states. Example: In August 2019 the Centre transferred about Rs 47,436 crore of CAMPA money to 27 states and Union Territories, with Odisha receiving the largest share because of the scale of past forest diversion there.
• Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES): Payments for Ecosystem Services are arrangements in which the beneficiaries or users of nature's services, such as clean water, pollination or carbon storage, pay the landowners or communities who maintain the ecosystems providing them. The idea turns conservation into income, aligning livelihoods with ecological protection through voluntary and conditional transactions. Example: A city water utility paying upstream farmers to protect forests that keep its reservoir silt-free is a classic PES deal.
• Soil organic carbon : Soil organic carbon (SOC) is the non living organic material in the solid fraction of soil from decomposed plant, animal and microbial residues. It matters because it builds soil structure, raises water holding capacity and drives nutrient cycling, so losing SOC means losing both farm productivity and a carbon store.
• Soil pollution : Soil pollution is the presence of toxic chemicals in soil at concentrations that risk human health and ecosystem function, from industrial effluents, agrochemical overuse, plastics, mining dust and landfills. It matters because pollutants move from soil into groundwater and food chains, cutting yields while exposing people directly.
• Van Adhiniyam rules : The Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Amendment Rules are the forest conservation rules governing diversion of forest land and compensatory afforestation in India. The 2025 amendment is in news because it eased working permission for linear projects and made Protected Forest notification of compensatory land optional, sharpening the debate between infrastructure speed and ecological safeguards.

Practice questions