Land degradation threatens human wellbeing, major report warns

Jonathan Watts in Medellín 

Mon 26 Mar 2018 14.30 BST

More than 3.2bn people are already affected and the problem will worsen without rapid action, driving migration and conflict

Soil erosion in Tanzania. Fertile soil is being lost around the world at a rate of 24bn tonnes a year.
Photograph: Carey Marks/Plymouth University

Land degradation is undermining the wellbeing of two-fifths of humanity, raising the risks of migration and conflict, according to the most comprehensive global assessment of the problem to date.

The UN-backed report underscores the urgent need for consumers, companies and governments to rein in excessive consumption – particularly of beef – and for farmers to draw back from conversions of forests and wetlands, according to the authors.

With more than 3.2 billion people affected, this is already one of the world’s biggest environmental problems and it will worsen without rapid remedial action, according to Robert Scholes, co-chair of the assessment by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). “As the land base decreases and populations rise, this problem will get greater and harder to solve,” he said.

The IPBES study, launched in Medellín on Monday after approval by 129 national governments and three years of work by more than 100 scientists, aims to provide a global knowledge base about a threat that is less well-known than climate change and biodiversity loss, but closely connected to both and already having a major economic and social impact.

The growing sense of alarm was apparent last year when scientists warned fertile soil was being lost at the rate of 24bn tonnes a year, largely due to unsustainable agricultural practices.

A 10-square-kilometre expanse of toxic waste on the edge of the Gobi desert, inner Mongolia. Photograph: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images

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