World’s land quality suffering
This should come as not surprise, but very sad none the less. The ISRIC-World Soil Information, a soil research and education organization, has released a global land degradation study that says 25% of the world’s land and soil quantity is in bad shape and getting worse. I don’t doubt what this study has to say. Just look around you and it is obvious that humans have a massive impact on the earth’s land. In the US, over development destroys forests and natural areas and side effects like water runoff and drainage impact the surrounding areas. River damming and flood control impacts soil deposits that ultimately effect farm lands. Third world and developing nations lag even further behind in land conservation. It hasn’t been until very recent years that the ultimate impact of this has been know and solutions have been proposed. However, given that the earth has a finite amount of resources, this conclusion should have been obvious long ago.
Unfortunately, global warming hype waters down the impact of reports such as this. Any environmental cause not associated with global warming is marginalized. Likewise, the hype of “warming” has turned many conservatives into skeptics of all environmental issues. The victim of this is real conservation work. The solution to this problem is rather simple on the large scale. Education and implementation of proper land reuse and conservation techniques would go a long way to solve the problem.
