What’s desertification? Experts hopeful devastating trend can be reversed
An area the size of Egypt, around 100 million hectares, of healthy and productive land is being degraded each year due to drought and desertification, which is being driven mainly by climate change and poor land management.
On 2 December, countries from around the world will meet in Riyadh under the auspices of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, (UNCCD) to discuss how to turn the corner from degradation to regeneration.
Here are five things you need to know about desertification and why the world needs to stop treating the planet like dirt to protect the productive land which supports life on Earth.
No life without land
It is perhaps to state the obvious, but without healthy land there can be no life. It feeds, clothes and shelters humanity.
© UNEP/Florian Fussstetter
A member of an indigenous group in the Amazon, in Brazil, works to reforest the land.
It provides jobs, sustains livelihoods and is the bedrock of local, national and global economies. It helps to regulate climate and is essential for biodiversity.
Despite its importance to life as we know it, up to 40 per cent of the world’s land is degraded, affecting around 3.2 billion people; that’s almost half of the global population.
From deforested mountains in Haiti, to the gradual disappearance of Lake Chad in the Sahel and the drying up of productive lands in Georgia in eastern Europe, land degradation affects all parts of the world.
It is not an exaggeration to say our very future is at stake if our land does not stay healthy.
Degraded land
Desertification, the process by which land is degraded in typically dry areas, results from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities, such as over-farming or deforestation.
100 million hectares (or one million square kilometres), that’s the size of a country like Egypt, of healthy and productive land is lost each year.
The soils on these lands which can take hundreds of years to form are being depleted, often by extreme weather.
Droughts are hitting harder and more often, three out of four people in the world are projected to face water scarcity by 2050.
Temperatures are increasing due to climate change further driving extreme weather events, including droughts and floods, adding to the challenge of keeping land productive.
Land loss and climate
There is clear evidence that land degradation is interconnected with broader environmental challenges like climate change.
© World Bank/Andrea Borgarello
A man looks across a desert in Mauritania.
Land ecosystems absorb one-third of human CO2 emissions, the gas that is driving climate change. However, poor land management threatens this critical capacity, further compromising efforts to slow down the release of these harmful gasses.
Deforestation, which contributes to desertification, is on the rise, with only 60 per cent of the world’s forests still intact, falling below what the UN calls the “safe target of 75 per cent.”
What needs to be done? – the ‘moonshot moment’
The good news is that humankind has the knowhow and power to bring land back to life, turning degradation into restoration.
Robust economies and resilient communities can be cultivated as the impacts of devastating droughts and destructive floods are tackled.
© UNCCD/Juan Pablo Zamora
A community in Mexico comes together to work on improving their lands.
Crucially, it is the people who depend on land who should have the biggest say in how decisions are made.
UNCCD says that to “deliver a moonshot moment for land,” 1.5 billion hectares of degraded lands need to be restored by 2030.
And this is happening already with farmers adopting new techniques in Burkina Faso, environmentalists in Uzbekistan planting trees to eliminate salt and dust emissions and activists protecting the Philippines capital, Manila, from extreme weather by regenerating natural barriers.
What can be achieved in Riyadh
Policy makers, experts, the private and civil society sectors as well as youth will come together in Riyadh with a series of goals, including:
- Accelerate restoration of degraded land by 2030 and beyond
- Boost resilience to intensifying droughts and sand and dust storms
- Restore soil health and scale up nature-positive food production
- Secure land rights and promote equity for sustainable land stewardship
- Ensure that land continues to provide climate and biodiversity solutions
- Unlock economic opportunities, including decent land-based jobs for youth
Fast facts: The UN and desertification
- Three decades ago, in 1994, 196 countries and the European Union signed up to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification or UNCCD.
- The Conference of the Parties or COP is the main decision-making body of UNCCD.
- UNCCD is the global voice for land where governments, businesses and civil society come together to discuss challenges and chart a sustainable future for land.
- The 16th meeting of the COP (otherwise known as COP16) is taking place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from 2-13 December.
- UNCCD is one of three “Rio Conventions.” along with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD). These are outcomes of the historic 1992 Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
