Soil Erosion as an Emerging Environmental Challenge in South - East Geopolitical Zone of Nigeria: Towards a Sustainable Land Conservation for National Development

Abstract:

Soil erosion is recognized as one of the world's most serious environmental problems, which has sculpted our landscape for centuries. It depletes the productive capacity of land as it removes nutrients, organic matter and clay from soil, which are most important for plant growth. Soil erosion has a wide range of costly off-site impacts including damage to roads, disruption to transport and electricity supply, contamination of wetlands, watercourses and marine environments, and human health impacts caused by raised dust. Soil erosion is a natural geomorphologic process resulting from water and land interactions but accelerated to become an environmental hazard by human activities such as clearing of forests for cultivation, poor farming practices and encroachment into marginal lands. However, since man utilizes the soil to grow food, build shelter and roads, it is thus an essential part of life, which need to be sustained and protected from the threat of soil erosion. The soil needs to be sustained for future generations and to ensure that it does not collapse under the threat of soil erosion. Sustainable development has the great potential to address fundamental issues and challenges of soil erosion. It attempts to combine growing concerns about a range of environmental issues with socio – economic issues. Un – sustainable pattern of production and consumption in the environment yield scarcity of resources, degrade the environment and aid rapid changes in the natural ecosystem which sustain life. This paper aims at providing insight to the sustainable approaches to soil erosion in the South – East Geopolitical zone part of Nigeria. It also addresses the challenges associated with soil erosion such as loss of farmland and biodiversity, land degradation etc. The study concludes that since soil is a major component, from where we obtain our food, build shelter, raise livestock and other life processes, then there is need for it to be sustained. It recommends awareness and enforcing environmental regulations. as some of the ways to address the challenges of soil erosion.