• Forests and deserts

    • Forests are disappearing, and deserts are growing. The Earth's ecosystems are under heavy pressure. And it could soon be too late to reverse the negative trends.

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  • Growth of world's deserts

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    • The world's deserts are growing

    Drought has been labelled “the silent killer”. Each year, an area of fertile soil the size New Mexico or Poland is swallowed by desserts and made useless for farming. Often in areas where people already are starving.

    It’s bad

    In Africa alone, 36 countries are affected by desertification or land degradation. Some estimate that 75 percent of the entire continent’s farmland is rapidly losing the basic nutrients needed to grow crops.

    We are responsible for it

    The main reasons why deserts are growing are climate change and human activities such as too intensive farming, poor irrigation and clearing of forests. Today, growing deserts are threatening an area larger than the combined area of the US, India, China and Russia (40 million square kilometers).

    The future

    It will be a huge challenge to secure food for everyone when our lands for farming are degrading, or disappearing, and the world's population is growing by 200,000 people every day…

    We can reverse the development !

    Think about this: every year we lose about 42 billion US dollars worth of agricultural products because of desertification and drought. Taking action to prevent this loss would only cost 2.4 billion US dollars per year.

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