33K ha of arable land lost daily due to drought

ARABLE land is being lost globally at a rate of 12 million hectares a year or about 33,000 hectares a day due to drought, a pace that is 30 to 35 times the historical rate, largely due to a lack of adequate research and coordination among governments, according to experts from the Germany-based United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

At the UNCCD-sponsored Africa Drought Conference in Windhoek, Namibia the drought crisis was described with even more alarming statistics: The proportion of Earth’s land area experiencing drought, estimated at 10 to 15 percent in the early 1970s, exceeded 30 percent in early 2000, and is assumed to still be increasing. In Africa, the continent hardest-hit by drought, an estimated two-thirds of the entire land area is classified as either desert or dryland.