ИСТИНА

Economics of land degradation (ELD) is a challengeing initiative focused on the motivation of the decision makers to pay attention to land and soil degradation and thus promote sustainable land management approaches in land use. At the initial stage of its development the initiative provided global and regional overviews of the extent of land degradation and its economic effect, taking into account the loss of the major ecosistem services besides agricultural food production. The economic arguments had a significant impact on administrators, but concrete actions to be taken were not clearly described until recently. Current approach to the ELD focuses mainly on the decision making on farm level. At this scale the responsibility of expert is high, and many factors should be taken into account t o provide guidance for the optimal land use and soil management. We also discuss the additional conditions for using the ELD Methodology: most landscapes are already transformed by humans, and we should take into account that the lands are already degraded , and investment would be needed for land reclamation before application of sustainable soil management practices. We recommend to follow several steps for assessing the economic effect of sustainable land use vs. "traditional" land management: (1) the est imation of the feasibility of ecological restoration of the land, (2) the evaluation of the cost of land reclamation, (3) the assessment of the cost of "action" (sustainable land management) vs. "inaction" (agriculture "as usual"), and (4) the comparison o f the cost of land reclamation with the potential benefit from sustainable land use for a given planning horizon. Unfortunately, the inclusion of the "accumulated harm" of the degraded lands significantly decreases the area of the soils siutable for profit able sustainable management. Keywords: economics of land degradation, sustainable soil management, accumulated harm, decision making, ecosystem services