As Earth grows warmer, its ground is becoming drier and saltier, with profound consequences for the planet’s 8 billion inhabitants — nearly a third of whom already live in places where water is increasingly scarce and the ability to raise crops and livestock is increasingly difficult. Climate change is accelerating this trend. New research has found global warming has made 77 percent of the Earth’s land drier over the past three decades while rapidly increasing the proportion of excessively salty soils. Drylands, or arid areas where water is hard to come by, now make up more than 40 percent of the planet (excluding Antarctica), a likely permanent consequence of climate change, according to a landmark report by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, or UNCCD. Another new analysis, by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, or FAO, found that roughly 10 percent of the world’s soils are affected by excess salt, with another 2.5 billion acres at risk.These interwoven trends threaten agricultural productivity, biodiversity, and ecosystem health while exacerbating food and water insecurity. Together, the two reports sound an urgent alarm: Unless the world curbs emissions, these shifts will continue, with grave implications. “Without concerted efforts, billions face a future marked by hunger, displacement, and economic decline,” said Nichole Barger, an aridlands ecologist who works with the UNCCD. Some 7.6 percent of the planet’s land was remade by climate change between 1990 and 2020, with most of the impacted areas shifting from humid landscapes to drylands — defined as an area where 90 percent of rainfall evaporates before reaching the ground. Together, they cover a geographic expanse larger than Canada, researchers found, and in 2020 were home to about 30 percent of the world’s population. That’s a jump of more than 7 percent in recent decades. Unless the world sharply limits emissions, that proportion could more than double by the end of the century. By that point, more than two-thirds of land worldwide, with the exception of Greenland and Antarctica, is expected to store less water.These changes are not limited to regions already considered dry, or expected to experience desertification. When modeling global high-emissions scenarios, the researchers found similar changes could occur in the Midwest, central Mexico, and the Mediterranean, to name three examples. The researchers have no expectation that this trend will reverse. What Hannah Waterhouse, a soil and water scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, finds “important, and unnerving to emphasize” is that this expansion occurred under conditions that aren’t nearly as hot as what’s to come. That suggests the problem will only escalate and, as food and water grow more scarce, usher in issues like widespread conflict, she said.“We can look to current geopolitical and ecological events that are playing out currently
Mer. Gen 8th, 2025
