The countries arrived at the joint agreement at the ministerial meeting of environment and climate change ministers at Bali, Indonesia this week. India was represented by environment minister Bhupender Yadav at the meeting.
Latest ‘global land outlook’, released by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) this year, shows that around 40% of the land globally is degraded, affecting almost half of humanity and threatening roughly half of global GDP (US$44 trillion).
“Our collective efforts must help achieve the implementation of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021- 2030), and progress towards our global climate targets, guided by the principles of the UNFCCC and the other Rio Conventions,” said Yadav while addressing the ministerial meeting in Bali last Wednesday.
He also expressed his concerns over land degradation, saying 23% of global land area is no longer productive for agricultural use, and 75% land has transformed from its natural state.
Noting collective decision to reduce degraded land by 50% by 2040 and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, Yadav said, “For this, continued support is needed for the G20 global initiative on reducing land degradation and enhancing conservation of terrestrial habitat.”
As far as India is concerned, the country faces land degradation to an extent of 96.4 million hectares, which accounts for 29.3% of its total geographical area (328.7 million hectares. The country had in 2019 pledged to restore 26 million hectares of its degraded land by 2030 as part of its ongoing efforts to achieve its LDN targets.
The LDN is a stage where the amount and quality of land resources remains stable or increases within specified temporal and spatial scales and ecosystems, factoring in degradation and restoration. Simply put, any country will not have net loss in terms of land degradation if it achieves LDN through restoration efforts.
India will assume the Presidency of the G20 from December 1, culminating in the G20 Summit in 2023.