Sustainable Land Management to Combat Desertification in Pakistan
摘要
Pakistan is predominantly a dryland country, where 80% of its land area is arid to semi arid and majority of its 168 million populations depend on dryland to support their livelihood mainly through agro-pastoral activities. Out of 79.6 million hectares of land area of Pakistan, 62.4 million hectares are susceptible to desertification, as only 4.2% of the total land is under forests. In view of the aridity, 60% of the country is classed as rangelands, 48% of these rangelands are degraded. However, like many other dryland developing countries, the majority of land is severely affected by land degradation. The desertification is mainly due to unsustainable land management practices. The situation is further aggravated by scarcity of water, frequent drought, flash flood climatic change impacts, which results in contributing to expansion of deserts, reduce land productivity and consequently increase in desertification and increase in rural poverty. There are policies, institutional, financial and socio-economic issues which affect adversely to sustainable overall land management in the country.