75% of Earth’s Land Areas Are Degraded, IPBES Report Warns

More than 75 percent of Earth’s land areas are substantially
degraded, undermining the well-being of 3.2 billion people,
according to the world’s first comprehensive, evidence-based
assessment. These lands that have either become
deserts^[1], are polluted, or have
been deforested^[2]
and converted to agricultural production are also the main causes
of species extinctions.

If this trend continues, 95 percent of the Earth’s land areas
could become degraded by 2050. That would potentially force
hundreds of millions of people to migrate, as food production
collapses in many places, the report warns. (Learn
more about biodiversity under threat^[3].)

“Land degradation, biodiversity loss, and climate change are
three different faces of the same central challenge: the
increasingly dangerous impact of our choices on the health of our
natural environment,” said Sir Robert Watson, chair of the Intergovernmental
Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem
Services^[4] (IPBES), which produced
the report (launched Monday in Medellin, Colombia).

IPBES is the “IPCC for biodiversity”—a scientific assessment of
the status of non-human life that makes up the Earth’s life-support
system. The land degradation assessment took three years and more
than 100 leading experts from 45 countries.

Rapid expansion and unsustainable management of croplands and
grazing lands is the main driver of land degradation, causing
significant loss of biodiversity and impacting food security, water
purification, the provision of energy, and other contributions of
nature essential to people. This has reached “critical levels” in
many parts of the world, Watson said in an interview.

Wetlands have been hit hardest, with 87 percent lost globally in
the last 300 years. Some 54 percent have been lost since 1900.
Wetlands continue to be destroyed in Southeast Asia and the Congo
region of Africa, mainly to plant oil
palm^[5].

Underlying drivers of land degradation, says the report, are the
high-consumption lifestyles in the most developed economies,
combined with rising consumption in developing and emerging
economies. High and rising per capita consumption, amplified by
continued population growth in many parts of the world, are driving
unsustainable levels of agricultural expansion, natural resource
and mineral extraction, and urbanization.

“We’ve know about this for over 20 years but it is only getting
worse,” said Luca Montanarella, a soil scientist from Italy and
co-chair of the assessment.

Land degradation is rarely considered an urgent issue by most
governments, even though many have signed an international
agreement^[6] to reach land
degradation neutrality by 2030. “We need to find a stable balance
between our lifestyle and our impacts on nature,” Montanarella said
in an interview in Medellin.

Ending land degradation and restoring degraded land would get
humanity one third of the way to keeping global warming below 2°C,
the target climate scientists say we need to avoid the most
devastating impacts. Deforestation alone accounts for 10 percent of
all human-induced emissions.

For developing regions like parts of Asia and Africa, the cost
of inaction in the face of land degradation is at least three times
higher than the cost of action. And the benefits of restoration are
10 times higher than the costs, the report found.

Ending production subsidies in agriculture, fisheries, energy,
and other sectors would go a long way to reducing pressure on
nature. Roughly 25 percent of Africa has shifted out of cattle and
sheep production simply because it has become too dry and
unproductive to be profitable, said Robert Scholes, a South African
ecologist and co-chair of the assessment.

“These lands are reverting back to wildlife, which are better
adapted to those conditions,” Scholes said. “The same things is
happening in Australia.”

There are many proven approaches to reversing these trends,
including urban planning, replanting with native species, green
infrastructure development, remediation of contaminated and sealed
soils (e.g. under asphalt), wastewater treatment, and river
channel restoration^[7]. Land needs to be
managed at a landscape scale, where the needs of agriculture,
industry, and urban areas can be balanced in a holistic way,
Scholes said.

Better, more open-access information on the impacts of traded
commodities is also needed, he adds. Many rich countries “offshore”
their environmental impacts by importing huge quantities of food,
resources, and products from other countries. The European Union
imports 30 to 40 percent of its food, for example.

“Through this report, the global community of experts has
delivered a frank and urgent warning, with clear options to address
dire environmental damage,” said Watson.