Global Farmland is Becoming a Desert
Crops will fail, prices will rise, and all but the rich will suffer.
At a critical juncture in humanity’s struggle against environmental collapse, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research has released its damning report, Stepping Back from the Precipice. Coinciding with the third and final COP meeting of 2024 — the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) — this study underscores the apocalyptic trajectory of our land use practices and their consequences. But does anyone care? Based on the tepid ambition of previous COPs this year, expectations for meaningful action remain dismally low.
A Million Square Kilometers of Lost Hope
The findings of Stepping Back from the Precipice are devastating: global land degradation is accelerating, swallowing over a million square kilometers of fertile land annually. This relentless expansion undermines biodiversity, disrupts food security, and propels humanity closer to systemic collapse. At this pace, the entire planetary ecosystem risks becoming inhospitable to advanced life forms — a bleak echo of the six planetary boundaries already breached, including land-system change and biogeochemical cycles
The UNCCD COP meeting, like its counterparts on climate change and biodiversity…
