Nature
UN: Grasslands in distress
Sheep move through barren pastureland. photo
© Dean Lewins/AAP/dpa
Almost half of the world’s land areas are grasslands. They serve as habitat for wildlife and as grazing areas for livestock. But their soil quality is declining, a UN report warns.
The natural grasslands – more than half of the global land area – are largely in poor condition. In up to 50 percent of these areas called rangelands, the soil quality is reduced, experts write in one UN report that was published.
It is a “serious threat to humanity’s food supply and the well-being or even survival of billions of people,” said the Secretariat of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in Bonn.
“When we cut down a forest, when we see a 100-year-old tree fall, it rightly triggers an emotional reaction in many of us. The conversion of ancient pastures, on the other hand, happens quietly,” said UNCCD Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw.
Much of the earth consists of rangelands
Rangelands are various landscapes grazed by game and livestock with primarily natural vegetation. These semi-natural grasslands include prairies, steppes, savannahs, bushlands, deserts and tundras. However, forests and intensively used agricultural areas are not included.
According to the UN report, rangelands make up around 54 percent of the earth’s land area. “They account for one sixth of global food production and represent almost a third of the earth’s carbon stock,” writes the UNCCD. In total, around two billion people depend on these areas. 84 percent of the rangelands are used for livestock farming.
According to the report, problems include low soil fertility and nutrients, erosion, salinization and soil compaction. “All of these factors contribute to drought, rainfall variability and the loss of biodiversity above and below ground.”
Negative impacts from new farmland
The UNCCD cites changes in land use as the main reasons for the poor situation. Pastures are being converted into arable land, also driven by the rapidly growing demand for food, textile fibers and biofuel. It is also problematic when pastures are excessively used by herds of animals – or when they are no longer cared for by shepherds and become wild. The climate crisis and loss of biodiversity are also affecting rangelands, according to the UNCCD.
In many West African countries, around 80 percent of the population is employed in livestock farming. In Central Asia and Mongolia, 60 percent of the land area is used as pasture, and almost a third of the population there makes a living from livestock breeding. There are also large rangelands in North and South America, in large parts of Africa and in Australia.
In the USA, however, large parts of the grassland have been converted into arable land, and some Canadian grassland areas are being damaged by large-scale mining and infrastructure projects. In Europe, many rangelands have given way to urbanization, reforestation and renewable energy production, the report said.
And in Germany?
In Germany there are no rangelands according to the UNCCD definition, as a map in the report shows. There is also grassland in this country, said grassland expert Anja Schmitz from the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) to the German Press Agency. It accounts for about a third of the agricultural area. With a few exceptions, the grassland vegetation here was not created naturally, but rather through agricultural use, said Schmitz. Unlike the rangelands, the grassland in this country is shaped, fertilized, maintained through cultivation and grasses are often specifically sown. Meadows are mown several times a year and farm animals are kept in fenced pastures.
But there is also natural pasture farming in Germany, said Schmitz. Think, for example, of alpine pastures in the mountains or wandering shepherds who, with their animals, contribute to the preservation of important grassland biotopes in the cultural landscape. Where animals graze, species diversity is generally greater than in frequently mown meadows, said Schmitz.
The UNCCD experts recommend, among other things, better protection of so-called pastoralism. This is a way of life that is thousands of years old and in which itinerant herders keep sheep, goats, cattle, horses, camels, yaks and llamas, among other animals. “Although they number an estimated half a billion people worldwide, communities practicing natural pastoralism are often overlooked, have no say in political decisions that affect them, are marginalized and even often viewed as outsiders in their own country,” said Thiaw.