Groundwater is polluted due to poor land practices, atmospheric deposition of pollutants and direct discharge of sewage into water bodies.
Across the world climate change is set to exacerbate problems where poor land use and population pressure is already putting an immense strain on finely balanced ecologies.
For poor countries land deals offer a chance to reverse decades of underinvestment in agriculture.
"Our first fear is that the Bureau of Land Management has such a poor history of land management, " said Scott Silver, director of the Oregon-based Wild Wilderness organization.
He said just putting ash into pits at La Collette was a poor use of land.
The UN blames the massive migrations from rural areas either on population growth that the countryside cannot sustain or on economic prescriptions said to emphasize commercial agriculture over small farming, thus driving the poor off the land.
With the institute he devised a plan to help Peru's poor get title to land and businesses more quickly and efficiently.
China's demand for fertiliser is expected to be particularly buoyant as a result of its huge population and the poor quality of its arable land.
ECONOMIST: Feeding the world has become a mouth-watering opportunity
With the support of then-president Alan Garcia and his successor, Alberto Fujimori, the ILD created a plan for Peru's poor to get title to land and businesses more quickly and efficiently.
"Our development has the potential to kickstart regeneration in one of the most deprived boroughs in London, where land values are poor and yet no regeneration monies are available to it, " added Levy.
But critics say that despite the rich resources that bring billions of dollars annually, the wealth is not trickling down to the rural poor who live on the land where the gold is mined.
Fourth is education, which is not only failing to prepare the rural poor for work off the land, but is also no longer equipping enough talented young graduates with the skills that have fuelled the services boom.
This settlement, where fruit gathering is the only form of production permitted, is part of a program of agrarian reform designated for poor families who depend on the land for survival.
Of course scarce land, red tape, poor education and infrastructure, and onerous labour laws partly offset this.
Due to the consequences of the environmental crisis in Aral Sea region such as poor soil conditions, intensive desertification and land degradation, the farmers and dehkhans often face a plenty of problems.
Mr Mugabe promises that their land will be given to poor blacks, but in cases where the owners have already fled or been evicted, their farms have often been given to rich cronies of the ruling party.
Such people, land-rich but cash-poor, may now submit their credits to the state treasury for a full cash refund whenever the state budget is in surplus.
ECONOMIST: Clever ways to save land in the newly populous West
Of course perennially land-rich and cash-poor Chesapeake was seeking to talk up its book at the time it was negotiating joint ventures, but that vast discrepancy between the values that the company was touting to shareholders in its presentations compared with ultimate deal realizations should just reiterate how little credibility McClendon has with investors.
FORBES: Chesapeake Settles For Less Than Expected In $1B Deal With Sinopec
His adopted land has become an inspiration to many poor countries, especially in Africa.
But Mr Mugabe continues, in his speeches, to promise to seize land without compensation, for the rural poor.
Conservationists say there are long-term benefits to the poor if they conserve the forests, as the land retains water and nutrients.
There will be rich kids who land legacy slots at fancy colleges, poor kids who fall behind while attending rotten elementary schools.
Nearly half of America's corn crop was also rated very poor to poor, while 57% of its pastures and range land were similarly graded.
The rebels, known as Naxalites, have been fighting the central government for more than four decades, demanding land and jobs for tenant farmers and the poor.
In 16 poor countries, 55% of female-headed households own land, but 64% of male-headed ones do.
It shows that failures in the markets for credit, insurance, land and human capital result in underinvestment by the poor, overinvestment by the rich and a less efficient economy.
ECONOMIST: The World Bank cannot go where its research is leading it
Well, hurricane strikes are actually a really poor measure of hurricane activity, since whether major hurricanes hit land or stay out at sea or hit some other country is pretty random (the only metric that is worse is hurricane damage numbers, which are biased over time and geography with large variations in coastal development value).
In many poor countries the number of mobile users has overtaken the number of land-line users in less time than it takes to get a land line installed.
Four times the area of France, and source of a fifth of the world's nickel and two-fifths of its platinum, Russia's entire Krasnoyarsk krai, or region, has only about as many inhabitants as Boston and despite their land's vast natural wealth, they are as poor as church mice.
ECONOMIST: The contest for control of one of Russia's richest regions
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