Lennart Olsson
Professor, Docent
Restoring Degraded Lands
Author
Summary, in English
Land degradation continues to be an enormous challenge to human societies, reducing food security, emitting greenhouse gases and aerosols, driving the loss of biodiversity, polluting water, and undermining a wide range of ecosystem services beyond food supply and water and climate regulation. Climate change will exacerbate several degradation processes. Investment in diverse restoration efforts, including sustainable agricultural and forest land management, as well as land set aside for conservation wherever possible, will generate co-benefits for climate change mitigation and adaptation and morebroadly for human and societal well-being and the economy. This review highlights the magnitude of the degradation problem and some of the key challenges for ecological restoration. There are biophysical as well as societal limits to restoration. Better integrating policies to jointly address poverty, land degradation, and greenhouse gas emissions and removals is fundamental to reducing many existing barriers and contributing to climate-resilient sustainable development.
Department/s
- LUCSUS (Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies)
Publishing year
2021
Language
English
Pages
569-599
Publication/Series
Annual Review of Environment and Resources
Volume
46
Links
Document type
Journal article review
Publisher
Annual Reviews
Topic
- Environmental Sciences related to Agriculture and Land-use
- Physical Geography
Keywords
- biodiversity
- carbon cycle
- climate change adaptation
- climate change mitigation
- global environmental change
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1543-5938