MARIO SIUKUTA
CLIMATE CHANGE HAS become one of the pressing issues of our age, raising very real and distinct concerns in countries across the globe.
The fight against climate change often centres on shifting and limiting the use of fossil fuels to renewable energy source solutions which will eventually help reduce carbon emissions.
A crucial element I would like to draw attention to is land and its role in combating climate change.
In itself, land is fundamentally linked to both climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies.
Its rehabilitation is crucial to helping reduce climate change and achieving sustainable development. But in order to do so, we need to understand the nexus between land and climate change.
How land is used and managed is an essential action in addressing climate change. It involves processes by which human activities transform the natural landscape.
These include the burning of forests, ploughing of grasslands, and deforestation when clearing land for construction, industrial agriculture, urbanisation, and other types of land use.
All these actions threaten key components of the land system and challenge its capacity to support livelihoods, socio-economic development, and wildlife, among others.
They alter the land over the long term, adversely affect food security, and also cause land degradation.
These actions can have an impact on the climate through unpredictable heavy rains, increased temperatures, flooding and other natural disasters.
The relationship between the two shows how both influence each other, and that land also has the potential to mitigate climate change, and contribute to building adaptive strategies.
This means any viable solution to the climate crisis will require improvements in the way in which land is currently utilised.
In itself, land is a critical resource that needs to be sustainably managed.
