Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Tuesday, December 10, 2024

More than 75% of the world’s land has become drier over the past three decades, the UN warned Monday in a report released at COP16 desertification, revealing a crisis that could affect up to five billion people by 2100.
Between 1990 and 2020, 4.3 million square kilometers of wetlands were transformed into drylands, an area larger than India.
A phenomenon caused by a major climatic transformation that could redefine life on Earth, asserts this study by a group of scientists commissioned by the UN, entitled “The Global Threat of Drying Lands”.

Aridity, a chronic shortage of water that makes agriculture difficult, now extends over “40.6% of the Earth’s land surface”, excluding Antarctica, compared with “37.5% 30 years ago”, according to the scientists, whose worst-affected areas include the Mediterranean rim, southern Africa, southern Australia and parts of Asia and Latin America.

“Unlike droughts, which are temporary, aridity represents a permanent transformation,” warned Ibrahim Thiaw, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).“This crisis is redefining ecosystems, economies and livelihoods”, he explained.
According to the report, this trend is largely attributed to global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions, which alter rainfall and increase evaporation.
“For the first time, a UN scientific body is warning that the burning of fossil fuels is causing permanent drying across much of the world, with potentially catastrophic impacts on access to water, potentially bringing people and nature even closer to disastrous tipping points,” warns Barron Orr, chief scientist at the UNCCD.
The consequences of aridity are manifold: soil degradation, ecosystem collapse, food insecurity and forced migration.
“More than 2.3 billion people” already live in arid zones, a figure that could exceed five billion by the end of the century if greenhouse gas emissions are not drastically reduced, says the report.
In Africa, aridity has caused a “12% drop in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) between 1990 and 2015”, while global agricultural yields of maize, wheat and rice are set to fall by tens of millions of tonnes by 2040, according to the report.
To counter this trend, the scientists recommend “integrating aridity into drought monitoring systems”, improving soil and water management, and supporting the “most vulnerable communities”.

Humaniterre with AFP