UN warns of planet degradation with spent natural resources

A third of the planet’s land is now severely degraded due to doubling in the consumption of natural resources over the past 30 years, a United Nations report has warned.

According to the Global Land Outlook (GLO), launched recently by the secretariat of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), some 15 billion trees and 24 billion tons of fertile soil are lost each year.

The GLO takes a critical look at financial and socio-economic values of land, and its impact on the poor. It marks the first in-depth analysis of land functions viewed from multiple lenses such as economic growth and global trade patterns, highlighting the inextricable links between land, these sectors, and the people that can work to save it.

The UNCCD said that “smallholder farmers, women and indigenous communities are the most vulnerable, given their reliance on land-based resources, compounded by their exclusion from wider infrastructure and economic development.”

UNCCD executive secretary Monique Barbut said land degradation and drought are global challenges and intimately linked to most, if not all aspects of human security and well-being, particularly food security, employment and migration.

“As the ready supply of healthy and productive land dries up and the population grows, competition is intensifying, for land within countries and globally,” Barbut said.

She noted that with the human population growing an extra 200,000 people daily, and 20 countries declaring drought emergencies over the last 18 months, there are unforeseeable challenges.