UN negotiations to stop the desertification and deterioration of large areas of land begin in Saudi Arabia on Monday after scientists issued a dire warning about deforestation and unsustainable farming.
The 12-day United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) summit, which aims to protect and restore land and address drought in the face of climate change, has been dubbed a “moonshot moment” by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
The last such meeting, or “Conference of the Parties” (COP) to the convention, held in Ivory Coast in 2022, produced a commitment to “accelerating the restoration of one billion hectares of degraded land by 2030”.
However, in order to address crises such growing droughts, the United Nations Climate Conference (UNCCD), which unites 196 nations and the European Union, now mandates that 1.5 billion hectares (3.7 billion acres) be restored by the end of the decade.
A day before the talks in Saudi Arabia, home to one of the world’s biggest deserts, a new UN report warned that forest loss and degraded soils were reducing resilience to climate change and biodiversity loss.
“If we fail to acknowledge the pivotal role of land and take appropriate action, the consequences will ripple through every aspect of life and extend well into the future, intensifying difficulties for future generations,” UNCCD Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw said in the report.
Food shortages and migration are caused by land degradation, which also damages ecosystems and reduces agricultural land productivity.
When human activities like pollution or deforestation have reduced the productivity of land, it is said to be degraded. One severe kind of degradation is desertification.
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