![]() Tropical deforestation, in addition to biodiversity loss and soil degradation, is also responsible for significant amounts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions ( Henders et al., 2015 Busch et al., 2019). (2011) report that across the world, 24 percent of the existing tropical forests are intact, 46 percent are fragmented, and 30 percent are degraded. Only a minority of the forests remains as intact forest landscape 1 ( Potapov et al., 2008). The magnitude of these changes is important: ~100 million hectares of tropical forest were converted to farmland between 19 ( Gibbs et al., 2010 Hansen et al., 2013), and between 20 selective logging was estimated to have affected about 20 percent of tropical forests ( Asner et al., 2005). Research and on-the-field activities to prevent forest degradation and promote restoration have instead concentrated mostly on tropical forests, where important changes are taking place. It has also been estimated that if the current pace of land degradation were to continue, it could reduce global food production by as much as 12 percent and increase the price of some commodities by as much as 30 percent during the period 2010–2030 ( IFPRI, 2012).Įven though land and soil degradation is widespread and occurs globally ( Nkonya et al., 2011, 2016), research and projects have focused mostly on arid, semiarid, and dry subhumid areas, with particular attention paid to the susceptibility of such ecosystems to desertification ( Lu et al., 2007). ![]() Some estimates indicate that land degradation has reduced productivity on 23% of the global land surface ( Díaz et al., 2019) and that more than 3.2 billion people are affected by it ( United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), 2017). Between, 1997 Between, 2001, losses due to global land-use changes were estimated at US$4.3–US$20.2 billion per year ( Costanza et al., 2014 Suding et al., 2015). Estimates indicate that the global cost of land degradation due to land-use change and to the use of land-management practices that negatively impact the “health of land” is about US$300 billion annually ( Nkonya et al., 2016). ![]() Land degradation has multiple and complex impacts on the global environment through a range of direct and indirect processes that affect a wide range of ecosystem services and livelihoods ( Nkonya et al., 2016). This paper provides important insights into how a full integration of crop production in restoration efforts could impact food production levels, food availability, forest carbon stocks, and Greenhouse gas emissions. Significant global efforts to address degradation exist, but studies that evaluate the global benefits of these efforts generally do not account for global market forces and the complex web of relationships that determine the effects of wide-scale restoration on production and food security. The current scale of land degradation is such that the problem can be meaningfully addressed only if local successes are upscaled and a large number of landowners and land managers implement restoration activities. Although a relatively rich body of literature that investigates localized experiences, geophysical, and socioeconomic drivers of land degradation, and the costs and benefits of avoiding land degradation already exists, less rigorously explored are the global effects of restoring degraded landscapes for the health of the land, the climate, and world food security. 3International Union for Conservation of Nature, Landscape Restoration Science and Knowledge in the Global Forest and Climate Change Programme, Washington, DC, United StatesĮxisting approaches and methodologies that investigate effects of land degradation on food security vary greatly.2Argonne National Laboratory, Energy Systems Division, Lemont, IL, United States.1International Food Policy Research Institute, Environment and Production Technology Division, Washington, DC, United States.Alessandro De Pinto 1 * Nicola Cenacchi 1 Richard Robertson 1 Ho-Young Kwon 2 Timothy Thomas 1 Jawoo Koo 1 Salome Begeladze 3 Chetan Kumar 3
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