Conservation and Enhancement of Natural Resources

Meeting food and livelihood security needs in developing countries will require the conservation and enhancement of natural resources that contribute to agricultural production. Chief among the resources to be sustainably managed are soils and forests. Failure to protect and improve soils will lead to dramatic decreases in domestic agricultural production and consequent dependence on imported food supplies, an infeasible option in poor countries lacking foreign exchange to purchase foreign foodgrains. Failure to conserve and enhance forests and wooded areas will expose other resources (especially water and soil) to increased degradation, reducing the availability of fuel and game and leading to less biodiversity--potentially robbing the rural poor of needed resources, with consequences on a regional and even global scale. To address these problems, past trends in soil degradation or enhancement and forest conversion and land use need to be charted, the proximate causes of these trends in selected areas of the developing world should be identified, and most importantly, likely and perhaps not-so-likely scenarios (involving different combinations of technologies, policies, and institutional arrangements) and the impact of these different scenarios on soils and forests must be considered.