ABSTRACT
Agricultural land degradation not only affects agricultural production and watershed-scale natural resources, but can also have global environmental impacts. Land degradation can contribute to climate change (through increased emissions of greenhouse gases and changes in the ability of terrestrial ecosystems to serve as carbon sinks), and reduce biodiversity, both directly in degraded areas and indirectly by inducing expansion of cultivated areas. When there are strong linkages between land degradation and problems of global concern, efforts to combat both can be mutually supportive. A joint World Bank/IFAD project explored options to address both local and global concerns through integrated projects. Lack of data on the specific situation found in project areas is an important obstacle to these efforts. In the case of biodiversity, the main constraint is that the biodiversity at risk from agricultural land degradation has not been as well studied as biodiversity in protected areas. In the case of climate change, the main constraint is that few data exist on changes in emissions resulting from changes within a given land use.
