Economics of Land Degradation Contribution to Soil Security in Eurasia.

Global food security is jeopardized by the increasing land degradation, which is especially dangerous in the poorest countries of the world. Evident hotspots are recognized in Africa and Southern Asia. Northern Eurasia, including Russia, has been considered as a relatively stable territory with minor impact of land degradation. However, soil degradation is active in Russia, as it is driven by a complex of natural and socio-economic factors. The socio-economic factors and the dynamics of land use in Russia are unique. In the recent history in Russia, there was a rapid transition from state and collective farms formed under conditions of a planned centralized economy to private farms of various forms and sizes operating under market conditions. Such changes resulted in changes in land use, including of arable lands, in Russia. In the 1990s the economic reforms resulted in active reduction in arable land and cultivated areas that continued up to 2001-2002. Since 2002 the area of arable lands in Russia has reached a stage of stabilization. The official data of the state land records show that during the period from 1990 to 2001, the area of arable land has decreased by 8.5 million ha. During the period 2001-2006 the rate of land abandonment has decreased resulting in the decline of 1.9 million hectares. In general for the period from 1990 to 2006 the area of arable land has decreased by 10.7 million hectares. Most of the abandoned lands were located in the regions with severe climate and poor soils; however, the biophysical conditions in the abandoned areas were not restrictive for agricultural production. The “excess” of arable land in Russia does not mean that the agricultural soils in the country do not degrade. Since the cultivated area decreased due to economic reasons, the pressure on the fields under use proportionally increased, thus leading to the degradation of the most productive soils. It is a major challenge for the agriculture in the country, which is not properly addressed until now. We need deeper understanding of both the socioeconomic and biophysical drivers of land degradation in Russian Federation. In our study we estimated the cost of land degradation in Russia using a Total Economic Value (TEV) framework. The latter estimates evident economic losses due to land degradation, such as the decline in the productivity of the main zonal crops, together with the loss in non-market values of the ecosystem services. We have calculated the cost of land degradation in the region using the approach described in detail in the methodological section of this paper. The results showed that the total annual costs of land degradation due to land-use change only were about 189 bln USD in 2010 as compared with 2002. About two thirds of these costs were related to land-cover change in Siberian and Far Eastern districts. Land degradation costs per capita also varied among Federal districts: the dramatically highest in Far Eastern (11679 USD annually) and lowest in Southern, Central and Volga (144, 157 and 164 USD annually, respectively). The total economic value of ecosystem goods and services was estimated to equal about 3700 bln USD in Russia, exceeding the GDP by 3 times. The relative value of ecosystems per capita depends on the area, land use/cover characteristics, and population. In this regard, the Far Eastern district with its huge area, most of it under higher valued shrublands, forest lands, and grasslands, and relatively smaller population, had the highest per capita value of ecosystems in Russia. The Central district with the biggest population in the region and almost half of its territory consisting of croplands had the lowest ecosystems value. From another perspective, in the Far Eastern district the share of GDP of the Total Economic Value was just 5%; this value equaled 334% in the Central district and 90% in the Southern and Volga districts. This implies that population pressure on ecosystems is much higher in this districts. The results of the analysis of the costs of action showed that the costs of action against land degradation were lower than the costs of inaction in Russia by 5 – 6 times over the 30 years, meaning that each dollar spent on addressing land degradation was likely to have about 5 – 6 dollars of returns. The costs of action were found to equal about 702 bln USD over a 30-year horizon, whereas if nothing is done, the resulting losses might equal almost 3663 bln USD during the same period. The research illustrates that soil security can be expressed quantitatively using the approaches proposed by the economics of land degradation.