{"id":20023500,"date":"2017-12-05T12:30:05","date_gmt":"2017-12-05T07:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thethirdpole.net\/?p=23500"},"modified":"2024-06-12T06:21:48","modified_gmt":"2024-06-12T05:21:48","slug":"more-people-die-of-drought-than-all-other-calamities-put-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/climate\/more-people-die-of-drought-than-all-other-calamities-put-together\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018More people die of drought than all other calamities put together\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2015, when governments were asked what they would like to do to combat climate change, why did more than 140 countries include the issue of soil? Because of drought, says Monique Barbut, executive secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification<\/a> (UNCCD).<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can all see the social and political consequences of migration from Africa to Europe. But do you realise that 100% of migrants are coming from drylands?\u201d Barbut asked, while talking to a group of journalists\u00a0at the recent UN Climate summit in Bonn.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only asset of most people is land, and that asset is becoming less and less productive all the time due to climate change. Every year, more people die of drought than of all other calamities put together. This year, 25 million people in the Horn of Africa have been left without means to feed themselves,\u201d she elaborated.<\/p>\n

Solutions are available \u2013 land can be restored at less than USD 300 per acre \u2013 and this, according to Barbut, is a must to feed the growing population of the world.\u00a0Some 4 million\u00a0hectares of new land\u00a0must be in production every year.<\/p>\n

So where will this new land come from? The only solution is to restore degraded land \u2013 of which there are 2 billion hectares. Restoring just 300 million hectares of degraded land would ensure global food security ’til 2050, according to Barbut. It will also close the carbon dioxide emission gap by a third.<\/p>\n

Much noise is made about other ways to combat climate change, but \u201cthis does not get any publicity because most of the cost is labour cost, and there are no large companies involved\u201d, said the UNCCD head. \u201cBut restoring land does improve soil carbon sequestration, so this is starting to generate some interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Be prepared<\/strong><\/p>\n

In an era of climate change, all countries need to be prepared for droughts, Barbut believes. Three countries have drought preparedness systems \u2013 the US, Australia and Israel.<\/p>\n

The UNCCD has started a drought preparedness initiative in the form of the Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) Fund,<\/a>\u00a0which hopes to gather USD 300 million by the start of 2018, the largest after the renewable energy fund. Barbut said the plan is to use the money in the same way as the renewable energy fund, by using the grant money as a guarantee to design bankable projects.<\/p>\n

Twelve million hectares of land are destroyed each year due to unsustainable farming practices and climate change. \u201cWe want to restore an equal amount each year to reach neutrality by 2030,\u201d Barbut said.<\/p>\n

It is not enough for the UNCCD to have tree-planting projects to keep deserts at bay, Barbut has found. Instead, the organisation\u00a0must get into related issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cLack of land rights causes desertification,\u201d\u00a0she said. Water conflicts between herders and farmers are increasing everywhere. What the organisation is trying to do around the world is nothing less than to restore the sustainability of agriculture \u2013 especially in marginal and rain-fed farms \u2013 in an era of climate change, so that the foundation on which human civilisation has rested for\u00a0more than 10,000 years may be maintained.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Droughts are getting worse due to climate change; treating wastelands is the only viable answer, says the head of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20000114,"featured_media":20023501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[761],"tags":[519,532],"hashtags":[],"country":[],"class_list":["post-20023500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate","tag-climate-impacts","tag-desertification"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\u2018More people die of drought than all other calamities put together\u2019 | Dialogue Earth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Droughts are getting worse due to climate change; treating wastelands is the only viable answer, says the head of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/climate\/more-people-die-of-drought-than-all-other-calamities-put-together\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u2018More people die of drought than all other calamities put together\u2019\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Droughts are getting worse due to climate change; 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