Reports and Indices

UN Report on Land Degradation 2024

December 20 , 2024 3 days 111 0

77.6 per cent of the Earth’s land likely became permanently drier in the three decades leading up to 2020, compared to the previous 30-year period (1961-1990).
Drylands are expanded by about 4.3 million km2 – an area nearly a third larger than India, and now cover 40.6% of all land on Earth (excluding Antarctica).
Currently, 2.3 billion people inhabit the drylands, this number could rise to five billion by 2100.
Asia is home to 1.35 billion dryland inhabitants, more than half the global total.
China, India and Pakistan together account for about 50 per cent of the global dryland population.
Meanwhile, nearly half of Africa’s population (620 million people) also lives in these arid regions.
Between 1990 and 2015, African nations recorded a 12 per cent decline in gross domestic product (GDP) due to aridity.
Among Asian nations, aridification was considered responsible for a 2.7 per cent GDP drop over the same period.