Life on earth hangs on a thin thread. The warming of the earth’s climate is taking place in an atmospheric layer that makes up two-tenths of a percent of the radius of the planet. Land degradation, soil erosion, and desertification, problems affecting a growing area around the globe, involves the slimmest of terrestrial layers –about 0.0003 percent of the planet’s radius, the thin layer of soils where vegetation grows. On such margins do our lives and livelihoods depend.
Land degradation has long been thought of as a regional environmental problem rather than a global one or, more recently, labeled an offshoot or side effect of climate change rather than a critical environmental issue in its own right. The growing global population, and an understanding of the increased agricultural output that will be needed to feed the planet, are changing that. Land degradation is emerging as one of the major global environmental issues of our time.
