Land Degradation Threatens Food Supplies

After two weeks of intense negotiations on how to tackle land degradation, desertification and drought, the largest and most inclusive United Nations land conference wrapped up in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The nearly 200 countries convening at the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) committed to prioritize land restoration and drought resilience in national policies and international cooperation as an essential strategy for food security and climate adaptation. Nations also made significant progress in laying the groundwork for a future global drought regime, which they intend to complete at COP17 in Mongolia in 2026. In the meanwhile, more than USD 12 billion were pledged to tackle desertification, land degradation and drought around the world, especially in the most vulnerable countries.

UNCCD estimates that at least USD 2.6 trillion in total investments are needed by 2030 to restore more than one billion hectares of degraded land and build resilience to drought. This equals USD 1 billion in daily investments between now and 2030 to meet global land restoration targets and combat desertification and drought.

The conference acknowledged a significant shift in the global approach to land and drought issues, highlighting the interconnected challenges with broader global issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss, food security, forced migration, and global stability.

Greater voice for Indigenous Peoples and other non-state actors

In a landmark decision, Parties requested the creation of a Caucus for Indigenous Peoples and a Caucus for Local Communities. The objective is to ensure that their unique perspectives and priorities are adequately represented in the work of the Convention. The declaration ‘Sacred Lands’, presented during the inaugural Indigenous Peoples’ Forum, underscored the role of Indigenous Peoples in sustainable resource management and called for greater involvement in global land and drought governance, including through participation in land restoration efforts.

Acknowledging the role of science as the foundation for sound policies, the Parties agreed on the continuation of UNCCD’s Science-Policy Interface (SPI) to translate scientific findings into recommendations for decision-makers. The SPI presented definitive evidence that three quarters of the Earth’s ice-free surface have become permanently drier in the past 30 years, with a predicted five billion people living in drylands by 2100, showing the urgency to take action.

Some 77.6% of Earth’s land has experienced drier conditions since the 1990s compared to the previous 30-year period. Over the same period, drylands — an arid area with low rainfall— expanded by about 4.3 million km2 equal to an area nearly a third larger than India, the world’s 7th largest country. Drylands now cover 40.6% of all land on Earth excluding Antarctica. In addition, agriculture accounts for 23% of greenhouse gas emissions, 80% of deforestation, and 70% of freshwater use. Droughts affect the livelihoods of 1.8 billion people worldwide, pushing already vulnerable communities to the brink. They also cost an estimated USD 300 billion per year, threatening key economic sectors such as agriculture, energy and water.

Rangeland ecosystems cover half of the Earth’s terrestrial surface and are the dominant land use in the world’s drylands, but have long been overlooked and are disappearing faster than rainforests. The degradation of rangelands threatens one-sixth of global food supplies, potentially depleting one-third of the Earth's carbon reserves. Some two billion people who live in pastoral areas are among the world’s most vulnerable in the face of desertification, land degradation and drought.

Global food production at increased risk from excess salt in soil

The extent of the world’s land affected by excess salt is set to increase rapidly with potentially devastating impacts on food production. About 1.4bn hectares (3.4bn acres), amounting to 10% of global land, is affected by salinity, with a further 1bn hectares classed as “at risk”, a report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization has found.

This is already having a serious impact on agriculture, as globally about a tenth of irrigated cropland and a similar proportion of rain-fed cropland is afflicted by excess salt. The potential losses to crop yields are as high as 70% in some cases.

Some of the world’s largest and most populous countries are particularly badly hit, including China and the US, Russia, Australia and Argentina. The central Asian region is also a hotspot, with Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan badly affected, while Iran and Sudan also rank among the countries suffering the worst effects. These 10 countries account for 70% of salt-affected soils globally.

Climate breakdown and poor agricultural practices are to blame. As temperatures rise, the extent of salt-affected soils is likely to increase to between a quarter and a third of all land by the end of this century, if current trends are not arrested.

While some salts are needed for crops, excess salinity reduces soil fertility. Too much salt absorbs water, making less available for uptake by plants. The salt also changes the physical structure of soil, causing it to clump together, and makes it more vulnerable to erosion.

Water scarcity, poor drainage, and overexploitation of the soil are key factors behind the increase in salinity. Sea level rises will exacerbate this, with the incursion of saltwater into coastal areas.

Farmers are often driven to poor practice by the pressure to increase short-term yields, which is creating longer-term problems. Global water use has increased by a factor of six in the last century, and this overexploitation of aquifers for irrigation is driving groundwater salinisation. Farmers are also irrigating crops with poor quality or salty water, pumping water excessively to feed their crops, and overusing chemical fertilisers. Removing deep-rooted vegetation, including trees, can also increase soil salinity.

The FAO found that, along with tackling the climate crisis, the best ways of restoring the fertility of soils were through a mix of traditional techniques such as mulching, interlayering soils with loose material, and improving crop rotations, and innovations including developing salt-resistant crops, and the use of bacteria, fungi and plants that remove or sequester salts. Regenerative farming practices, that focus on natural soil fertility, could also play a role.

Rising global temperatures and increasing pressure on agriculture are leading to the drying out of land around the world. Along with increasing salinity and declining soil fertility, these factors are combining to create unprecedented threats to food production.

SOURCES: https://www.unccd.int/news-stories/press-releases/united-nations-confer…
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/11/global-food-product…