Environmental Degradation

A voluntary pledge, not a treaty

• The Bonn Challenge is a global forest-landscape restoration initiative, launched in Bonn, Germany on 2 September 2011.
• Germany and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) run it. It works on voluntary pledges, not a binding treaty.
• Its global target: restore 150 million hectares of deforested and degraded land by 2020, and 350 million hectares by 2030.
• The 2014 New York Declaration on Forests, adopted at a UN Climate Summit, endorsed and extended these targets.

India’s pledge, raised once

• 2015: India joins the Bonn Challenge, pledging to restore 13 million hectares by 2020, and 8 million more by 2030.
• 2019: At UNCCD COP14 in Greater Noida, PM Modi raises India’s pledge to 26 million hectares by 2030. That is the largest single-country pledge under the Bonn Challenge.
• 2021: ISRO’s Atlas reports 29.7% of India’s land degraded, using 2018-19 data.
• 2026: India’s Second Progress Report shows 21.76 million hectares restored — 83.7% of the 26-million-hectare target.

Definition and scale

• Land degradation is the loss of land’s biological or economic productivity. It happens through soil erosion, vegetation loss, and desertification.
• ISRO’s Atlas found 97.85 million hectares degraded in 2018-19. That is 29.7% of India’s total geographical area.
• This share has been rising for two decades: 28.76% in 2003-05, 29.32% in 2011-13, then 29.7% in 2018-19.
• India’s Bonn Challenge pledge is to restore 26 million hectares by 2030 — still the largest single-country commitment under the initiative.

Four processes, plus a fifth

• Four processes cause most land degradation: water erosion (11%), soil-cover loss (11%), vegetation degradation (9%), and wind erosion (5%).
• Climate change adds a fifth factor. It shifts rainfall and wind patterns over time, worsening the other four.

Spreading, not shrinking

• Degradation increased in 28 of 31 states and Union Territories between 2011-13 and 2018-19, per the ISRO Atlas.
• Nine states account for roughly 24% of all degraded area: Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Ladakh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, and Telangana.
• Restoration work under the Bonn Challenge has a side benefit. It has generated about 1.22 billion person-days of employment, alongside its ecological goals.

Rising degradation, successful restoration — at once

• Degradation rising and restoration succeeding measure different things. They are not a contradiction.
• One tracks net land losing productivity across the whole country. The other tracks cumulative hectares brought under active restoration projects. Both can move upward at once.

Why the response uses many tools

• Land degrades through five separate processes, not one. That is why India’s response uses many different tools instead of a single fix.
• Afforestation, soil conservation, and watershed management all play a role.
• The 1.22-billion-person-day employment figure matters beyond ecology. It ties land restoration to rural livelihoods — a useful environment-economy link to cite in a GS answer.
• For pollution types and core ecosystem and biodiversity terms, see EnvEco0001. For the legal framework protecting India’s forests, see EnvEco0003.

A data gap admitted, and NICRA’s reach

• In a 7 August 2026 Parliament reply, the Agriculture Ministry admitted it has not formally assessed crop-yield losses caused specifically by land degradation.
• The same reply detailed NICRA (National Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture). ICAR runs it across 651 districts, with 448 Climate Resilient Villages in 151 vulnerable districts, spanning 28 States and UTs.
• Of 310 districts assessed for climate vulnerability, 201 rank “High” and 109 rank “Very High.” NICRA prioritises these for its climate-resilient interventions.
• Between 2014 and 2024, ICAR released 2,900 new crop varieties. Of these, 2,661 are tolerant to biotic or abiotic stress, like drought or pests.