In this Briefing
• What is desertification?
• Measuring and mapping desertification
• Desertification and agriculture: a two-way relationship
• Agricultural solutions to land degradation
• Desertification and EU agriculture
• Is the EU acting on desertification?

Evidence of desertification

Global estimates of total degraded area vary from less than 1 billion hectares to over 6 billion hectares. Many researchers have stressed the lack of standardised procedures for desertification assessment, which prevents them from obtaining comparable results across different regions of the world. Regional-scale studies offer location-specific information on desertification but do not allow for global comparisons.

A 2019 report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) asserts that current data availability and methodological challenges do not allow for the mapping of global desertification. The report also analyses the use of satellite-based remote sensing to investigate vegetation changes that identify those drylands that are undergoing desertification. In this context, it highlights a major shortcoming: satellite sensors do not detect vegetation composition (i.e., the increased presence of invasive plant species or intensive mono-cropping with a high level of fertiliser application may be seen as greening, while many indicators would identify them as risk factors for land degradation).

The EEA notes that a better monitoring system would provide crucial information on the status of land, such as the composition of soils and the amount of carbon and nutrients stored in areas. It suggests that further advances in the Copernicus satellites, which already monitor biophysical elements (for example, chlorophyll and water contained in leaves), are set to improve land monitoring in Europe in the years ahead.

The latest edition of the World Atlas of Desertification, released in 2018 by the Commission's Joint Research Centre with collaboration from UN Environment, focuses on the concept of 'convergence of evidence' as a move away from conventional desertification analyses. This implies a wide-ranging approach that looks at the complex dynamics in global land degradation processes and addresses both their multifaceted nature and the difficulty of interpreting them. According to this approach, 'when multiple sources of evidence are in agreement, strong conclusions can be drawn even when none of the individual sources of evidence is significant on its own' (UNCCD, 2017).

Therefore, instead of mapping a single indicator of desertification, the atlas provides patterns of coinciding processes in different types of areas (such as rangeland with vegetation suitable for grazing, forests, high/low input cropland and irrigated or rain-fed cropland), to help identify those that are affected by land degradation or can potentially move towards degradation or recovery.

# In the past 20 years, there has been an increase by 16 % of harvested areas worldwide, with almost 45 % of the agricultural land located in drylands (mainly in Africa and Asia) and supplying about 60 % of global food production.

# The World atlas of desertification states that more than 62 % of global food production goes to feed people, the remainder being used for animal feed (35 %) and for bioenergy and other industrial uses (3 %).
# By 2050, it is estimated that global food production would need to increase by 50 % to feed more than 9 billion people.

Desertification puts pressure on agricultural production
# According to the UN, 2.6 billion people depend directly on agriculture, yet 52 % of agricultural land is moderately or severely affected by soil degradation, with arable land loss estimated at 30 to 35 times the historical rate.

Unsustainable land management practices, adopted to produce more food, can turn into a serious threat to agricultural production and food security.

# FAO estimates indicate that approximately two-thirds of arable land could be lost to desertification in Africa by 2030.

Moreover, reduced and less predictable agricultural yields due to desertification constitute both a threat to the food security of people living in affected areas and a cause of more land degradation due to survival strategies developed to address people's most urgent needs.

# According to other estimates, agricultural production in developing countries is being lowered by 3-7 % annually because of the impact of land degradation on cropping systems, with bigger losses being sustained in irrigated areas, where salinisation has led to land abandonment in previously highly productive areas.

Studies conducted in Ethiopia reveal that the annual costs of land degradation stand at 2-3 % of agricultural production value, representing serious cumulative losses to land degradation over time for an agriculturally based economy.

# Based on soil, climate and vegetation quality parameters, 14 countries (Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Greece, Italy, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, and Spain) had areas of high to very high sensitivity to desertification in 2008.

# Less than a decade later, an improved sensitivity desertification index revealed that the situation had worsened: there were over 400 000 km2 of land of high and very high sensitivity in 2017, compared to the initially estimated 234 000 km2 (and 30 000 km2 instead of 10,000 km2 for land of very high sensitivity).

Figure 4 ( see page 10 ) shows in yellow to red shades the change towards decreased land quality.

# Of all 14 countries, Spain is the most severely threatened by desertification, but major concerns exist as well for extensive and expanding areas highly prone to degradation in Greece, Bulgaria, Italy, Romania and Portugal.

Is the EU acting on desertification?

In 2018, a European Court of Auditors' special report on combating desertification in the EU concluded that there is no EU-level strategy on desertification and land degradation. A range of EU policies, programmes and projects with different aims and scopes of action focus on soil management, but not on desertification (e.g. the EU's agricultural policy, strategies and programmes on environment and climate, cohesion and regional policy, water policy, and research programmes). Moreover, although data on desertification-related parameters do exist (such as those produced by the
Copernicus land monitoring service, the CORINE land cover inventory, and the LUCAS land use and land cover survey), there is no EU methodology to assess the phenomenon.

In the past, there have been attempts to address desertification within an integrated EU legislation framework. The 2006 thematic strategy for soil protection put forward a proposal for a directive for the protection of soil which should have contributed to halting desertification. Having encountered opposition from several EU Member States, the proposal was withdrawn as obsolete in 2014. Meanwhile, EU Member States have tackled desertification through international (such as the UNCCD) or national strategies and plans, without a common EU approach to this issue.

MAIN REFERENCES included in our library as well:
* Climate Change and Land: an IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, 2019.
* World atlas of desertification, Joint Research Service, European Commission, 2018.
* Global land outlook, United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, UNCCD, 2017.
Imeson A., Desertification, Land Degradation and Sustainability, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
* Land degradation and desertification, Policy Department for Economic and Scientific Policy, European Parliament, March 2009.