PIB Summary- 17th June, 2021 | PIB (Press Information Bureau) Summary - UPSC PDF Download

Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India

Context:
Government released the Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India.
About the Atlas:

• The Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India has been published by ISRO’s Space Application Centre, Ahmedabad.
• This latest version of the Atlas provides state wise area of degraded lands for the time frame 2018-19. It also provides the change analysis for the duration of 15 years, from 2003-05 to 2018-19.
• The salient findings of this Atlas are not only useful as a ready reference, but, will also be helpful in strengthening the envisaged National Action Plan for achieving land restoration targets by providing important baseline and temporal data and technical inputs.

Additional information:

• India hosted the 14th session of Conference of Parties (COP 14) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in September 2019.
• India is striving towards achieving the national commitments of Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) and restoration of 26 Million ha of degraded land by 2030 which focus on sustainable and optimum utilisation of land resources.
• Because land is fixed in quantity, there is ever-increasing competition to control land resources and capitalize on the flows of goods and services from the land.
• This has the potential to cause social and political instability, fuelling poverty, conflict and migration.
• For that reason, the implementation of LDN requires multi-stakeholder engagement and planning across scales and sectors, supported by national-scale coordination that utilizes existing local and regional governance structures.

About Desertification and Drought day:

• The World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought is observed on 17 June.
• The Day is meant for restoration of degraded land and to create and raise awareness regarding prevention of desertification of the soil.
• The day also aims at finding achievable solutions for combating desertification that can be practiced by the majority of the countries and individuals all over the world.
• The theme for 2021 is “Restoration. Land. Recovery. We build back better with healthy land”.
• The United Nations General Assembly decided to observe this day in 1994.