The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) report, entitled “Investing in Land’s Future: Financial Needs Assessment,” launched at the Conference of the Parties (COP16) to UNCCD in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, calls for at least 2.6 trillion dollars in investment by 2030, to restore more than one billion hectares of degraded land and build resilience to drought.
Up to 40 percent of the world’s lands are degraded, affecting more than 3.2 billion people, with the highest costs borne by those who can least afford it: indigenous communities, rural households, smallholder farmers, and especially youth and women.
This disastrous situation is exacerbated by the sharp increase in droughts (29 percent since 2000), which are projected to affect three out of four people worldwide by 2050.
Losses exceed the necessary investments. Desertification, land degradation, and drought already cost 878 billion dollars each year to global economy, much more than the investment needed to address these problems.
Such costs include reduced agricultural productivity and ecosystem services, the social costs of carbon losses, and the damage caused by drought.
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