Over 75% of Earth’s Land Is Permanently Drying: UN Report
The report was released at the U.N. summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on combating desertification — once-fertile lands turning into deserts because of hotter temperatures from human-caused climate change, lack of water and deforestation.
It found that more than three-quarters of the world’s land experienced drier conditions from 1970 to 2020 than the previous thirty-year period.
At the talks, which started last week and are set to end on Friday, nations are discussing how better they can help the world deal with droughts — a more urgent lack of water over shorter periods — and the more permanent problem of degrading land.
If global warming trends continue, nearly five billion people — including in most of Europe, parts of the western U.S., Brazil, eastern Asia and central Africa — will be affected by the drying by the end of the century, up from a quarter of the world’s population today, the report warned.