Managing fragile land to improve livelihoods

Rapid population growth, fragile land, and conflict

East and South Asia have the most people on fragile land, and Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa the largest shares, at nearly 40 percent each. All regions have several countries where people living on fragile lands make up half of their total populations. Between 1950 and 2000 several countries with a large share of their population on fragile land saw their rural populations triple or quadruple. And more than three-quarters of the 42 countries in civil conflict in the 1990s have significant populations on fragile lands (tables 4.2 and 4.3).

The size and speed of population growth in developing countries over the past 50 years was unprecedented-faster than the rate experienced in the OECD countries at any time in their history. In two generations the working-age population increased 3.5 times in North and Sub-Saharan Africa, and in Latin America and the Caribbean, and nearly 3 times in Central and South Asia. Rural population growth rates even now remain higher in countries where 30 percent or more of the population are on fragile land (figure 4.1). Many people are on marginal land because of their higher fertility rates and because of overcrowding on the better land. Refugees and displaced persons have also been forced there, because they have lost their homes-from floods, fires, hurricanes, conflict, civil war, or high urban unemployment.⁴ Some of the people in these marginal areas are the estimated 250 million indigenous people with distinct languages, cultures, and attachment to the land.⁵