Daily Times

Paris: Unsustainable farming is on track to increase the amount of severely degraded land by an area the size of South America by mid-century, a UN report warned Wednesday, as experts said restoration was a matter of “survival”.

Global food systems are responsible for 80 percent of deforestation and 70 percent of freshwater use, said the report. They are also the single largest driver of species extinction, which is occurring 100 to 1,000 times more rapidly today than when human activity began to radically change the climate and degrade nature.

“The risk of widespread, abrupt or irreversible environmental change will grow,” the Global Land Outlook 2 report warns. The 40 percent of Earth’s non-frozen land denatured by chemical-intensive exploitation threatens roughly half of global GDP, some $4 trillion, according to the 250-page peer-reviewed assessment, which called for action “on a crisis footing”.

“How we manage and use land resources is threatening the health and continued survival of many species on Earth, including the human species,” Ibrahim Thiaw, Executive Secretary of the UN convention charged with reversing land degradation told AFP. “Business as usual is not a viable pathway for our continued survival and prosperity.”

The flagship report of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) comes two weeks before the treaty’s 197 parties meet for the first time in three years, in Abidjan.