NEW YORK – The greatest threats to mankind’s existence today are caused by human activity rather than nature acting alone, according to a recent United Nations report.
Many people are familiar with human contribution to climate change and perhaps also the loss of biodiversity. But there is a third environmental impact that rarely gets the attention it deserves: desertification, also known as land degradation.
The world is rapidly losing usable land for self-inflicted reasons, ranging from intensive agriculture and overgrazing of livestock to real estate development and climate change. The crisis is further fuelling food and water insecurity, as well as adding to more greenhouse gas emissions.
Environmental scientists have not ignored the problem. In fact, the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 led to the creation of three UN conventions: climate change, biodiversity and desertification.
The climate convention holds big “conference of the parties” (COP) summits each year – such as COP28 in Dubai – that now frequently make front-page headlines. But while the biodiversity and desertification conventions also hold COP summits, they are only once every two years and rarely get that much interest.
It is a lost opportunity, said Mr Ibrahim Thiaw, executive secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, who hinted it could be a branding issue because people think it is only about deserts. “There is a misunderstanding of the term desertification. That’s why we also use ‘land degradation’,” he said.
Ironically, one of the biggest challenges in the fight against land degradation is universal: People need to eat. About 40 per cent of the planet’s land – 5 billion ha – is used for farming. One third of that is to grow crops and the rest for grazing livestock.
Unfortunately, the world does not have a great track record for sustainable agriculture practices. Over the past 500 years, human activity (mainly agriculture) has led to nearly 2 billion ha of land being degraded.
That has contributed to about 500 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent released from soil disturbance, or about a quarter of all greenhouse gases contributing to additional warming today. Further land degradation until 2050 could add another 120 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent to the atmosphere, worsening climate change.
Mr Thiaw said focusing attention on land restoration projects could flip this script. “There are no solutions for land degradation that also don’t have benefits for other problems we face,” he said.
Along with curbing emissions, a World Economic Forum report found that investing about US$2.7 trillion (S$3.6 trillion) each year in ecosystem restoration, regenerative agriculture and circular business models could help add nearly 400 million new jobs and generate more than US$10 trillion in economic value annually.
Governments globally spend more than US$600 billion on direct agricultural subsidies that can be redirected towards practices that help land restoration and increase yields, said Mr Thiaw.
“There’s nothing more irrational than taking public money to destroy your own natural capital,” he said. “But it is being done election after election.”
One reason the problem of land degradation has been largely ignored might be that humans have lost their link to the land, according to Dr Osama Ibrahim Faqeeha, president of COP16 on desertification, which will be held in Saudi Arabia in 2024. “A big portion of the population lives in cities now. We live in a concrete forest,” Dr Faqeeha said. “So few people have a direct connection between us and food production.”
Another explanation might have to do with how rich countries treated the problem. “For the longest time, it was considered an African issue” by developed countries, said Mr Thiaw. “It was not seen as a global issue.” Today, land degradation and drought affect almost every country in the world.
Even the biggest economy in the world is not able to ignore land degradation. “When you think about soil, the US Secretary of State is probably not the first person who comes to mind,” said Mr Antony Blinken at 2024’s World Economic Forum in Davos. “But the truth is, soil is literally at the root of many pressing national security challenges we face.”
Global demand for food is expected to increase 50 per cent by 2050, said Mr Blinken, even as climate change could reduce global yields by 30 per cent. “A parent who can’t put food on the table for their children picks up the family and moves,” he said, “And if that means moving halfway around the world, they will. But that contributes to unprecedented migration flows.” BLOOMBERG
