Key Highlights
- The 17 June 2026 observance underscored the critical role of rangelands in food security, biodiversity, and climate resilience.
- 2026’s theme, “Rangelands: Recognize. Respect. Restore,” calls for acknowledgement of the ecological, economic, and cultural worth of grasslands, savannahs, shrublands, and tundra.
- Healthy rangelands mitigate desertification, support livestock, regulate water, and buffer drought impacts.
- India contributed through 813 watershed‑development projects under PMKSY 2.0, fostering land restoration and drought mitigation.
Detailed Insights
Rangelands—spanning grasslands, savannahs, shrublands, and tundra—cover more than half of the planet’s terrestrial area. Their multifunctionality sustains billions of people by providing pasture for livestock, conserving wildlife habitats, regulating hydrological cycles, and enhancing resilience to climatic extremes. Yet, compared with forests and wetlands, they receive comparatively scant policy focus.
Degradation of these landscapes triggers a cascade of adverse outcomes: accelerated desertification, loss of productive capacity, erosion of species diversity, and heightened vulnerability to prolonged droughts. Primary drivers include deforestation, overgrazing, unsustainable agricultural practices, soil erosion, water scarcity, and the broader impacts of climate change.
The 2026 campaign urged stakeholders to respect the indigenous and local communities who have historically stewarded rangelands, while allocating resources toward ecological restoration. In India, the Ministry of Rural Development’s Department of Land Resources mobilised the Watershed Development Component of the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana 2.0, implementing 813 projects that integrate land‑restoration techniques, drought‑resilient irrigation, and community‑led watershed management.
Key Concepts
- Desertification: The progressive loss of land productivity in arid, semi‑arid, and dry sub‑humid zones caused by climatic variations and unsustainable human activities.
- Drought: An extended interval of below‑average precipitation that disrupts agricultural output, water availability, and ecosystem stability.
- Rangeland Restoration: The process of rehabilitating degraded grasslands, savannahs, shrublands, and tundra through practices such as controlled grazing, re‑vegetation, and water‑management interventions.