Is desertification a global problem?
Desertification is a worldwide problem directly affecting 250 million people and a third of the earth’s land surface or over 4 billion hectares. In addition, the livelihoods of some one billion people who depend on land for most of their needs and usually the world’s poorest in over one hundred countries are threatened. Though desertification affects Africa the most, where two-thirds of the continent is desert or drylands, it is not a problem confined to drylands in Africa. Over 30 percent of the land in the United States is affected by desertification. One quarter of Latin America and the Caribbean is deserts and drylands. In Spain, one fifth of the land is at risk of turning into deserts. The growing severity of the threat in the Northern Hemisphere is also illustrated by severe droughts in the United States and water scarcity in southern Europe. In China, since the 1950s, sand drifts and expanding deserts have taken a toll of nearly 700,000 hectares of cultivated land, 2.35 million
