Restoring South Asia’s degraded soils and ecosystems for peace and prosperity

Abstract

S outh Asia (SA), a subcontinent, is the world's most densely populated region. It consists of nine countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Iran, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka (figure 1). Myanmar and Tibet are also sometimes included in the SA region but won’t be included in this article. SA is a region with common geography, history, culture, language, and religions. The SA region has the world’s highest mountain ecosystem, the Himalayas, also called the Third Pole (Chaudhary et al. 2023). It also faces serious challenges of ecological degradation, which transcend beyond political boundaries and jeopardize global peace and political stability. Important among these issues are climate change, food and nutrition insecurity, soil degradation/pollution along with extinct/endangered and peak soils, water scarcity, and eutrophication, which exacerbate the flood-drought syndrome. The latter is aggravated by denudation of the landscape, excessive grazing, and deforestation of ecologically sensitive ecoregions. Additionally, pollution of air quality is aggravated by in-field burning of crop residues and attendant emission of soot and greenhouse gases, which create positive feedbacks to global warming. Ecological degradation in SA, a complex issue, is driven by a wide range of interacting factors, including rapid population growth, urbanization, industrialization, rapid deforestation, economic growth, poverty, and a high dependence on natural resources (Sultana et al. 2022; EFSAS 2021; Chaudhary et al. 2023; Ajmal 2023). These degradation processes perpetuate the threats of undernutrition and malnutrition as well as decline in human health and well-being to a large proportion of the population. They also increase risks of political instability, civil strife, soil/climate refugees, and war among nations of the SA region (figure 2). Indeed, soil and ecological degradation is the common enemy of Rattan Lal is a distinguished university professor of soil science and is director of the CFAES Rattan Lal Center for Carbon Management and Sequestration, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. Received March 27, 2023. all countries in SA, and they must cooperate, work together, and effectively address this menace. Thus, the objective of this article is to describe the common and hideous enemy of SA: soil and ecological degradation with its cascading adverse effects leading to human suffering; poverty; environmental pollution; global warming; political instability at local, regional, and global levels; and hostilities among neighboring countries. The specific hypothesis of the article is that restoring degraded soils and the polluted environment is critical to achieving human well-being and accomplishing lasting peace and harmony in SA.