Breaking the cycle of poverty

Breaking the cycle of poverty

In India 16 percent of the world’s population is struggling to survive on only 2.4 percent of the planets land mass. The pressure of this intense land utilisation is causing more and more forests and agricultural land to deteriorate into useless wasteland. In 2000, India’s Ministry of Land Use classified nearly 63 million hectares of the subcontinent —about one fifth of its entire territory — as wasteland out of which 33 million hectares of wasteland have been allotted for tree plantation. According to the Indian government, 174 million hectares — more than one half of the country’s territory — are suffering to a greater Or lesser extent from land degradation. But this process of deterioration is not the result of a law of nature. But the icious circle of erosion, soil deterioration and poverty can be broken by jatropha cultivation as this technology has a huge potential for replication nation-wide, improving the livelihood of many more.