Land degradation will unleash a mass migration of at least 50 million people by 2050 — as many as 700 million — unless humans stop depleting the life-giving resources, scientists warned yesterday in the first-ever analysis of the health of land around the globe and its ability to human beings.
The Land Degradation and Restoration Assessment Report, which was compiled at the request of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, was released in Medellin, Colombia, after it was approved by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
It took more than 100 volunteer scientists from around the globe three years to compile, analyzing all the available scientific data.
Already, land decay caused by unsustainable farming, mining, pollution, and city expansion is undermining the well-being of about 3.2 billion people — 40 percent of the global population, they said.
The condition of land is “critical,” IPBES said.
“We’ve converted large amounts of our forests, we’ve converted large amounts of our grasslands, we’ve lost 87 percent of our wetlands ... we’ve really changed our land surface in the last several hundred years,” IPBES chairman Robert Watson said of the findings.
“The message is: land degradation, loss of productivity of those soils and those vegetations will force people to move. It will be no longer viable to live on those lands,” he said.
“Between now and 2050, we estimate the number could be 50 [million] to some 700 million people,” he said, adding that the lowest number was a best-case-scenario projection.
It assumes “we’re actually starting to be much more sustainable, we’ve really tried hard to have sustainable agricultural practices, sustainable forestry, we’ve tried to minimize climate change,” he said.
The upper end of the range is based on a “business-as-usual” approach, he added.
The main drivers of land degradation were “high-consumption lifestyles” in rich countries, and rising demand for products in developing ones, fueled by income and population growth, the report said.
The problem of land decay does not only impact the people who live on it, but threatens food security for all Earth’s citizens, as well as access to clean water and breathable air regulated by the soil and the plants that grow on it, the report said.
The analysis estimated that land degradation cost the equivalent of 10 percent of global economic output in 2010.
In 30 years from now, an estimated 4 billion people — about 40 percent of the projected population by then — will live in “dryland” areas, arid and semi-arid places with low agriculture productivity, the report said, compared with just over 3 billion today.
“Implementing the right actions to combat land degradation can transform the lives of millions of people across the planet, but this will become more difficult and more costly the longer we take to act,” Watson said.
The land degredation report follows four reports the IPBES released on Friday the state of plant and animal species, which concluded that biodiversity was in decline in all regions.
Of concern to nations in Asia and the Pacific was that if current fishing practices continue, there will be no exploitable fish stocks in the region by 2048.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique