Over 75% of land 'permanently drier'

COP16 report warns irreversible damage in last three decades

RIYADH:

Just over 75 percent of the world's land has been left "permanently drier" over the previous three decades, a UN-backed report coinciding with COP16 talks on desertification in Saudi Arabia said on Monday.

Dry land now covers around 40 percent of the Earth's land mass, excluding Antarctica, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) study found, cautioning the shift could affect up to five billion people by 2100. "Some 77.6 percent of Earth's land experienced drier conditions during the three decades leading up to 2020 compared to the previous 30-year period," the report said.

It indicates an "existential threat" posed by the seemingly irreversible trends and showed that dry land -- regions where agriculture is difficult -- increased by 4.3 million square kilometres (1.7 million square miles) between 1990 and 2020, an area a third the size of India.

The warning comes during a 12-day meeting in Riyadh, which began last week, for the 16th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP16) under the UNCCD and seeks to protect and restore land and respond to drought amid ongoing climate change.

Aridity, a chronic shortage of water, now extends over 40.6 percent of the Earth's land mass, again excluding Antarctica, compared with 37.5 percent 30 years ago, the report warns. It also cautions the areas most affected include the nations bordering the Mediterranean, southern Africa, southern Australia and certain regions of Asia and Latin America.

"Unlike droughts -- temporary periods of low rainfall -- aridity represents a permanent, unrelenting transformation," said Ibrahim Thiaw, UNCCD Executive Secretary. "The drier climates now affecting vast lands across the globe will not return to how they were and this change is redefining life on Earth," he added.