Land decay to displace tens of millions, global survey warns

Updated 5 years ago · Published on 26 Mar 2018 11:30PM · 0 Comments

A volunteer of Shanghai Roots and Shoots prunes poplar trees that have been planted in 2008 in Kunlun Qi, in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China, on April 24, 2011. Inner Mongolia, China’s third largest province, is fighting severe desertification as over-grazing, logging, expanding farms and population pressure, along with droughts have steadily turned once fertile grasslands into sandy plains. China has adopted measures to stop the land degradation such as reforestation, resettling nomadic Mongolians from grasslands to urban areas and restricting grazing areas. Tree planting has become a key government effort to fight desertification. – EPA pic, March 26, 2018.

LAND degradation will unleash a mass migration of at least 50 million people by 2050 – as many as 700 million unless humans stop depleting the life-giving resource, dozens of scientists warned today

Already, land decay caused by unsustainable farming, mining, pollution, and city expansion is undermining the well-being of some 3.2 billion people – 40% of the global population, they said in the first comprehensive assessment of land health.

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