ABSTRACT
The key to effective management of water resources is understanding that the water cycle and land management are intimately linked. Every land-use decision is a water-use decision. Improving water management in agriculture and the livelihoods of the rural poor requires mitigating or preventing land degradation. Erosion, pollution, nutrient depletion, reduced plant cover, loss of soil organic matter, and other forms of degradation resulting from faulty agricultural land-use decisions threaten ecosystems, change regional and global hydrological cycles, and have enormous negative implications for water productivity, quantity, quality, and storage [well established]. Up to half the world's agricultural land and half its river systems are now degraded to some degree [established but incomplete]. The chief cause of land degradation is the unsuitable use of agricultural land. Because 80% of the world's poor rely directly on agriculture, degradation is particularly deleterious to small-scale farmers in developing countries. For farming communities key issues are declining returns to labor; the impacts of land degradation on human health, including rising malnutrition rates; and the increasing pollution of drinking water.
