‘Coastal urbanisation, tourism infrastructure, and deforestation pushed up severity’
Abdul Wahab Khan
Panaji : Over 52 per cent of Goa›s total land area stands degraded, placing the coastal state among India›s most environmentally stressed regions, according to a new research study that tracked land depletion across the country from the era of the Green Revolution to the present day.
Researchers found that Goa›s degraded land rose from 186,458 hectares — accounting for 50.37 per cent of its area — in 2003–05 to 194,877 hectares, or 52.64 per cent, by 2018–19, a troubling 4.57 per cent increase in just 15 years.
While Goa›s population density is far lower than eastern states, the pace of land deterioration driven by coastal urbanisation, tourism infrastructure, and deforestation has placed it alongside far larger states in terms of the severity of degradation.
Published in the IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science (Volume 30, Issue 5, May 2025), the study titled ‘From Green Revolution to Growing Crisis: A Temporal Analysis of Population Pressure and Land Degradation in India (1950–Present)’ was conducted by Sandeep Kumar, Assistant Professor at FGM Government College, Adampur, along with co-researchers Komal and Surbhi, both final-year MSc Geography students from the same institution.
The team set out to examine how India›s population explosion — from roughly 376 million in 1951 to an estimated 1.46 billion by 2025 — has systematically stripped the country of its most vital natural asset: productive land.
Using ArcGIS spatial mapping software and secondary data drawn from the Census of India, the Reserve Bank of India›s Handbook of Statistics, and the Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India published by the Space Applications Centre, ISRO, the team conducted a sweeping temporal analysis spanning over seven decades.
Jharkhand recorded the highest proportion of degraded land at 68.77 per cent in 2018-19, followed by Rajasthan at 62.06 per cent, Delhi at 61.73 per cent, Gujarat at 52.22 per cent and Nagaland 50 per cent.
Nationally, total degraded land swelled from 94.53 million hectares in 2003-05 to 97.85 million hectares in 2018-19 — nearly 30 per cent of India›s entire land mass.
The Green Revolution, the researchers have noted, planted the seeds of this crisis. Intensive farming in Punjab and Haryana, once celebrated as India›s breadbaskets, led to “soil salinisation, waterlogging and decline in fertility” — landscapes now bearing the scars of decades of chemical overuse.
Punjab alone saw its degraded land surge by over 80 per cent between the two study periods.
The researchers have recommended large-scale afforestation, community-based conservation, drip irrigation, and rainwater harvesting, calling on governments to enforce forest conservation laws aggressively.
“The pressure on our land is ever increasing,” the report has cautioned, stressing that without immediate policy intervention, degradation will compromise food security, biodiversity and long-term ecological stability.
