More than 40% of World’s Land Now Permanently Dry, UN Warns

Permanently dry – or arid – land is less fertile and inhabitable for most animal and plant species, leading to greater food and water insecurity and large-scale forced migration.

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An area almost a third larger than India has turned from humid conditions to permanently dry – or arid – in the past three decades, according to a new UN report published on Monday as a global conference on land degradation enters its second week.

Excluding Antarctica, drylands now make up 40.6% of all land on Earth, a 3% increase compared to the earlier 30-year period. Meanwhile, some 77.6% of the planet’s land experienced a drier climate within the same timeframe.

The number of people living in drylands has also increased, from 1.2 billion three decades ago to 2.3 billion in 2020, equivalent to 30.9% of all people on Earth. By 2100, as many as 5 million people – two in every five people on the planet – could live in drylands.

The Science-Policy Interface, the group of scientists for the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) behind the new report, said the changes can be attributed to human-caused climate change.

Rising temperatures are altering the water cycle in many areas of the world, increasing the risk of droughts.

Drought-induced water scarcity, land degradation and desertification increase soil aridity, resulting in less fertile land, crop and plant productivity losses, biodiversity declines and ecosystem degradation. The study warns that some 40% of the Earth’s arable lands are affected by aridity, which is considered the world’s single-largest driver of agricultural systems degradation.

Africa has lost an estimated 12% of its GDP to rising aridity between 1990 and 2015 and is forecast to lose another 16% in the next half decade. Asia risks losing 7% of its GDP in the same period. Together, the two continents are home to nearly half of all people living in drylands.

Arid land is also more prone to sand and dust storms, wildfires, and poor health, making it increasingly inhospitable for humans and most animal and plant species and thus driving large-scale migration. Densely populated drylands like California, Egypt, eastern and northern Pakistan, large areas in India and north-eastern China are particularly at risk.

According to Ibrahim Thiaw, executive secretary of the UNCCD, aridity represents a “permanent, unrelenting transformation.”

“Droughts end. When an area’s climate becomes drier, however, the ability to return to previous conditions is lost. The drier climates now affecting vast lands across the globe will not return to how they were, and this change is redefining life on Earth,” he said, according to the Guardian.

Failing to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the primary driver of global warming, would result in an additional 3% of dry land by the end of the century, the report warned. This will have dire consequences on food and water security.

As Praveena Sridhar, chief technical officer of the Save Soil campaign group, put it in an article for Earth.Org, “As the foundation of our agricultural systems, [soil] has an indispensable role in feeding the world. Healthy soil is a direct necessity for 95% of the food production for more than 8 billion people.”

The report was published as a global conference on land degradation in Saudi Arabia entered its second week. Governments convened in the capital Riyadh to negotiate a global agreement on halting the degradation and promoting the restoration of the world’s lands.

The UNCCD COP16 is the largest UN land conference to date. Follow Earth.Org for updates.