The 12-day meeting of parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), known as COP16, has ended in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh without an agreement on responding to drought.…Continue readingUN talks fail
Tag: desertification
Three-quarters of Earth’s land has become drier since 1990. A new report from scientists convened by the United Nations found that an area as large as India has become arid, and…Continue readingRising desertification shows we can’t keep farming with fossil fuels
An area of land nearly a third larger than India has turned from humid conditions to dryland in the past three decades. Drylands are areas where 90% of the rainfall is…Continue readingDrylands now make up 40% of land on Earth, excluding Antarctica
A new study from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering researchers, along with researchers from the Institute de Physique du Globe de Paris at the University of Paris Cité, has found…Continue readingDeserts’ biggest threat? Flooding
Rangelands cover 80 million square kilometers—more than half the land surface of earth. Mostly natural grasslands used by livestock and wild animals to graze, they also include scrubland, mountain plateaus, deserts…Continue readingDemise of rangelands ‘severely underestimated’: Report
Ongoing droughts and an over-exploitation of land for both agriculture and industry have stoked fears in Spain over the creeping spread of “sterile soil” which could devastate Europe’s kitchen garden. “Spain…Continue readingSpain worries over ‘lifeless land’ amid creeping desertification