Response to Land Degradation

Foreword
Preface and Acknowledgments
Contributors
Ch.1 Introduction
Box. 1.1 Using the Soil DPSIR framework-driving forces, pressures, state, impacts, and response-for evaluating land degradation
Box. 1.2 Ecological soil standards
Ch. 2 Setting the scene
Land and civilization: An historical perspective
Land degradation: An overview
Food Production and environmental degradation
Box. 2.1 What happens on earth in one minute?
Ch. 3 Driving forces and pressures
Demographic transition, resource management, and institutional change
Land pressure and soil nutrient depletion in sub-Saharan Africa
Box. 3.1 Population and land quality on tropical hillsides
Adoption of soil conservation practices in developing countries: Policy and institutional factors
Box. 3.2 Giant tiger shrimp cultivation and the salinization of arable land in Thailand
Box. 3.3 Causes and impacts of land degradation in the arid environment of Kuwait
Box. 3.4 Climate change and land degradation in Iceland
Ch. 4 State of the world’s land resources
Land quality and food security in Asia
Box. 4.1 Land degradation in Malaysia
Box. 4.2 Soil degradation and land use: A case study from India
Box. 4.3 Land degradation and land use policy in Vietnam
Land resource stresses and desertification in Africa
Box. 4.4 An assessment of land degradation in Thailand
Box 4.5 Land resource stress and desertification vulnerability in Thailand
Land degradation in Bangladesh
Landscape-scale changes in soil properties between 1967 and 1995 in Bangladesh
Soil degradation in Sri Lanka
Land degradation in Hungary
Box 4.7 Soil acidification under Stylosanthes seed production systems in Thailand and Australia
Box. 4.8 Soil degradation through deforestation in Petchabun, Thailand
Box. 4.9 Rehabilitation of the organic carbon pool in red soils of China
Ch. 5 Impacts on society and the environment
The future food security and economic consequences of soil degradation in the developing world
Land degradation, food security, and agro-biodiversity-examining and old problem in a new way
Productivity growth and resource degradation in Pakistan’s Punjab
Box. 5.1 Economic implications of land degradation in a large irrigation project in India
Valuing the off-site effects of land degradation
Box. 5.2 Impacts of land clearing on biodiversity and environmental quality in the Western Australian Wheatbelt
The global environmental impacts of agricultural land degradation in developing countries
Box. 5.3 A critical approach to indications of degradation: A case study from northeastern Botswana
Box. 5.4 Mass movements in East Africa: Transient or long-term land degradation?
Ch. 6. Tools for monitoring and assessment
Linking methodologies for assessing land resources, their problems and possible solutions at small scales
Spatial natural resource monitoring in Mpumalanga Province of South Africa
Tools for identification, assessment, and monitoring of land degradation
Box. 6.1 Remote sensing and GIS-aided land degradation monitoring: The case of Chi sub-waterhsed, Thailand
Application of remote sensing techniques for the study of soil salinity in semi-arid Uzbekistan
The economic appraisal of soil and water conservation measures
Box. 6.2 Assessing soil erosion and water pollution hazards associated with logging in New South Wales, Australia
Box. 6.3 Soil loss map of Thailand
Box. 6.4 Soil productivity rating for soil degradation assessment in the Philippines: A case study in Isabela Province
Box. 6.5 Soil microbial community structure as an indicator of soil pollution caused by gasoline spills
Box. 6.6 Participatory GIS as a tool for land use planning in northern Thailand
Ch. 7. Conservation and rehabilitation
Land degradation and renewal in the Gran Chaco of South America
Strategies to address land degradation issues in the Hindu Kush-Himalayas
Thailand’s response to land degradation: The need to control soil erosion
Uncertain steps? Terraces in the tropics
Box. 7.1 Land degradation and soil conservation in China
Box. 7.2 Occurrence, prevention, and amelioration of soil salinity
Box. 7.3 Using Sloping Agricultural Land Technology (SALT) for soil management on Sri Lanka tea lands
Box. 7.4 Sludge utilization in degraded and agricultural land
Box. 7.5 Sylvipasture system to rehabilitate degraded grassland
Box. 7.6 No-tillage system in Parana State, south Brazil
Box. 7.7 A participatory approach towards integrated soil management
Box 7.8 Sustainable rehabilitation of degraded volcanic ash soils in Mexico
Ch. 8. Institutional innovations
Incentives for soil conservation
Box. 8.1 Land tenure and soil conservation- new evidence from Southeast Asia
Application of a land management model to address land degradation in New South Wales, Australia
Box. 8.2 The catchment approach to soil and water conservation in Kenya
Box. 8.3 Conservation of biodiversity through Landcare
Box. 8.4 Farmer-led community institutions to reverse land degradation in the 21^st century
Box. 8.5 Environmental regeneration for poverty eradication in India
Participatory technology development for sustainable land management
Ch. 9. Law and policy
A global view of the law and policy to manage land degradation
Land degradation and native vegetation clearance in the 1990’s: Addressing biodiversity loss in Australia
Law and policy to manage land degradation in the Philippines
Conservation policy and socioeconomic development in Russia during the 20^th century
Box. 9.1 Strategies for rehabilitation of degraded in Vietnam
Box. 9.2 ASIALAND: A policy for sloping land management
Box. 9.3 Laws and policy to manage land degradation in Malaysia
Box. 9.4 Laws and policy for managing land degradation in Thailand
Box. 9.5 Waste minimization strategies in the USA
Ch. 10. International initiatives
Land degradation and international environmental law
Box. 10.1 The World Soil Charter
Box. 10.2. Land degradation and biodiversity conservation: International challenges
Land degradation: Information needs and challenges to research Investments in land improvement by the Asian Development Bank
Rangeland development for the rural poor in developing countries: The experience of IFAD
Lessons from World Bank natural resource management projects
Box. 10.3 The Soil Fertility Initiative for Sub-Saharan Africa
WOCAT: World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies
Box. 10.5 The Asia Soil Conservation Network for the Humid Tropics (ASOCON)
Ch. 11. Future responses
Index
The Editors

Biography

E. Michael Bridges is a soil scientist who has specialized in the geography, genesis and degradation of soils. He holds the degrees of BSc and MSc from the University of Sheffield and the degree of PhD in Physical Geography from the University of Wales. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Professional Soil Scientists and of the Royal Geographical Society of London. His career began as a soil surveyor with the Soil Survey of England and Wales and continued as a member of the academic staff of the University of Wales, Swansea. His final appointment was with the International Soil Reference and Information Centre (ISRIC) at Wageningen in The Netherlands. Dr Bridges has made over 120 contributions to scientific journals and has edited or co-edited several books including Principles and Applications of Soil Geography (Longman) and written The Soils and Land Use o f the Area North o f Derby (Soil Survey of Great Britain), Surveying Derelict Land (Oxford University Press), and World Soils (Cambridge University Press). He also contributed to the preparation of the World Reference Base for Soil Resources (Acco, Leuven) and co-edited an accompanying Atlas. Ian D. Hannam has had a 30-year career in many aspects of soil conservation and natural resource management. He is currently Manager o f Soil and Vegetation in the Department of Land and Water Conservation, New South Wales, Australia. He is an Appointive Vice President of the World Association of Soil and Water Conservation (Australasia). He obtained his Dip Agr Sci from the Charles Sturt University, BA and M Litt from the University of New England and PhD in Environmental Law from the Macquarie University. Dr Hannam is a world authority on the law and policy of soil conservation and is a member of the IUCN’s Commission on Environmental Law. He is currently leading the investigation into the development of frameworks for international and national environmental law instruments on sustainable soil. He is widely published in the subjects of land eValuatin, soil conservation field research, and national and international environmental law and policy. He advises governments on environmental law and policy reform for sustainable land management and now lectures on this topic throughout the world. L. Roel Oldeman has been Director of the International Soil Reference and Information Centre at Wageningen in The Netherlands since 1992. He holds the Irdegree in Tropical Soils from the Wageningen Agricultural University, The Netherlands, and the PhD degree from the University of Hawaii, USA, in Tropical Soils and Agronomy. The first nine years of his professional career were spent as an agroclimatologist in Indonesia, followed by a three-year assignment at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Los Banos, The Philippines, where, as a visiting scientist, he coordinated a United Nations Development Programme/World Meteorology Organization project on rice-weather relationships. In late 1985 he returned to The Netherlands to join the International Soil Reference and Information Centre (ISRIC). A special assignment' in Madagascar for IRRI/USAID led to the preparation of an agroclimatic map of Madagascar, published in 1990. He also coordinated the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) project for the Global Assessment of the Status of Human-Induced Soil Degradation (GLASOD), also published in 1990. In several recent papers and articles Dr Oldeman has expressed concern about the deteriorating condition of the soil resource and the threat this poses to food security, particularly in the developing countries of the world. Frits W.T. Penning de Vries graduated from the Nijmegen University, The Netherlands, as a biologist, and presented his PhD thesis in plant physiology at the Wageningen Agricultural University in 1973 on the subject of quantifying respiration in crops. After that, he participated in, and organized training programmes on, crop physiology and crop simulation, and took part in multidisciplinary research programmes on pasture production in West Africa, tree production in the USA, and rice production systems in Asia. Over 80 research papers resulted from his work, and he (co-)edited more than 10 books. He was editor-in-chief of the Kluwer Series Systems Approaches for Sustainable Agricultural Development, and editor of several journals, including Agricultural Systems (current). He was director of research of IBSRAM from 1997 to March 2001, and since then joined the International Water Management Institute, where research on land and water is his main task. Sara J. Scherr is an agricultural and natural resource economist, who specializes in the economics and policy of land and forest management in tropical developing countries, especially in environmentally fragile lands. She is presently a Fellow of Forest Trends, and Adjunct Professor at the Agricultural and Resource Economics Department of the University of Maryland, College Park, USA. She previously worked as a Principal Researcher at the International Center for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF) in Nairobi, Kenya, and as a Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington, D.C. She has published over 100 scientific papers and 8 books. Her current research focuses on agroforestry adoption, policies to promote environmental services in agricultural landscapes, policies to reduce poverty through natural resource conservation, impacts of land degradation and rehabilitation, and local institutions for natural resource management. She received her BA at the Wellesley College in Massachusetts, and her MSc and PhD in International Economics at the Cornell University in New York. Samran Sombatpanit had been a staff member of the Land Development Department, Bangkok, for 36 years until he retired in 1999. He has experience in research and extension in the field of acid sulphate soils, peaty soils and sloping land. He founded the Soil and Water Conservation Forum—the predecessor of the Soil and Water Conservation Society of Thailand—in 1980 and served as its first president. He is at present a member of the Board of Directors of the International Soil Conservation Organization (ISCO), the Deputy President of the World Association of Soil and Water Conservation (WASWC) and a member of the Management Group of the World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies (WOCAT) Project. He received his BSc (Soils) from Kasetsart University, Bangkok, and Agrlie in Soil Chemistry and Soil Fertility from the Swedish Agricultural University at Uppsala. He has earlier edited Soil Conservation Extension: From Concepts to Adoption, and co-edited Incentives' in Soil Conservation: From Theory to Practice, both published by the Science Publishers, Inc., USA.