To learn more, follow our live coverage from the UNCCD COP16.
When you hear the word ‘desertification,’ do you imagine lush green landscapes turning into deserts?
If so, you’re on the right track – but it’s a bit more nuanced than that.
Even as global temperatures break new records, the world’s population is expanding – which means growing demand for food and hence farmland.
That’s worrying news for the world’s arid and semi-arid lands, two types of drylands that are now at risk of drying out. Drylands cover roughly 46 percent of the Earth’s land area.
Eventually, these landscapes could lose all vegetation and no longer be able to support life. That’s desertification.
Sound scary? It certainly is for the 1.2 billion people whose livelihoods are threatened by land degradation globally, plus the roughly 50 million who could be displaced by desertification.
But why exactly is desertification happening? Who’s affected by it, and what’s being done to stop it? Find out in this explainer.
According to the International Panel on Climate Change, desertification is “land degradation in arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas, collectively known as drylands, resulting from many factors, including human activities and climatic variations.”
In short, desertification is when drylands, which are water-scarce areas, become dry to the extent that they are no longer productive.
This means that surface and groundwater diminish, and topsoil erodes so much that vegetation slowly dies out and plants can no longer grow.
Depending on the severity and length of these conditions, an ecosystem could turn into a desert – which is what happened to the Sahara about 6,000 years ago.
However, it’s important to point out that dry weather doesn’t always lead to desertification. Vegetation can often grow back quickly once rainfall returns.
While there is no single factor driving desertification, much of the desertification we see today is driven by a combination of human-made and natural factors.
Studies suggest that it can be partially caused by natural climate cycles, such as periodic cold and warmer cycles caused by phenomena like El Niño and La Niña.
But equally, human-caused climate change is causing more frequent droughts and wildfires, which can cause further desertification.
In 2021, Mauritania experienced its worst drought in its history, following years of consistent droughts. Now, one-third of its population lives on degraded land.
Wildfires can also drive desertification by reducing shrubbery and crop cover, leading to soil erosion and water runoff.
In Australia, extensive bushfires have degraded great swaths of its arid and semi-arid lands, which make up 70 percent of the country’s land area.
On top of the climate crisis, many other human actions also directly contribute to the degradation of drylands.
Monocropping is the practice of continuously planting only one crop in a large area, and it can quickly deplete soils of nutrients and degrade the land. Similarly, overgrazing can overburden land, causing nutrient loss and exposing soil.
Deforestation is yet another driver of desertification. Often carried out to clear space for agriculture or grazing, it can leave soil loose and thus more likely to erode without tree roots to hold it in place.
Over half of all irrigated croplands are located on drylands – and irrigation can play a role, too, by bringing excess salt into soils, further depleting them of nutrients.
Desertification can be devastating for rural livelihoods. By crippling the productivity of their land, it can leave local communities unable to grow enough food to survive.
As a result, they’re often forced to migrate elsewhere to escape poverty, which can in turn lead to conflicts with other land users.
But desertification doesn’t just affect people – it also has major impacts on biodiversity. As bacteria and microorganisms vanish from the soil, other biodiversity can follow suit.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Climate Change and Land, drylands are home to more than 20 percent of global plant biodiversity centers, as well as a quarter of all vertebrate species and 30 percent of endemic bird areas.
All of this biodiversity is under threat from desertification, with many dryland species now threatened with extinction.
The report also identifies several ‘desertification hotspots’ covering 9.2 percent of all drylands and affecting about 500 million people, predominantly in South and East Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.
But desertification is happening outside of these regions, too.
In the tropical Amazon rainforest, widespread deforestation and the climate crisis are changing parts of the ecosystem, which is now at risk of permanently drying out.
Experts have predicted that the Amazon could reach this tipping point within the next 15 to 20 years.
One of the most effective ways to prevent desertification is by restoring the world’s drylands.
A prime example is the African Great Green Wall – an initiative that aims to stop the growth of the Sahara by building an 8,000-kilometer green belt of trees stretching across 11 countries in the Sahel.
Other ways to restore dryland ecosystems include integrated water management systems, agroforestry, reforestation, rotated grazing and other sustainable land use methods.
These solutions couldn’t come sooner, because populations in drylands are projected to rise by 43 percent by 2050 – and these people will become increasingly exposed to the impacts of desertification due to the climate crisis.
From 2–13 December, country delegates are in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) COP16 – the world’s largest event on drylands this year.
This conference brings together governments, businesses, researchers, activists and landscape leaders to discuss and take action to reverse desertification. Stay tuned for our live coverage here on ThinkLandscape.
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