The United Nations warns of a global drought

The United Nations has warned of a global drought that could affect three quarters of the Earth’s population by 2050.

The German newspaper Der Spiegel today quoted the United Nations as saying in its latest report that “the rate of drought in the last two decades has increased by 29 per cent on the ground.” It noted that developing countries are the most affected by drought problems, including in the African coast, where the consequences of drought there lead to severe water shortages, soil degradation, and persistent desertification.

The United Nations report added that these problems are growing further in other countries of the world, sounding the alarm in Europe as well, where some 3.6 billion people are currently living in water-shortage areas for at least one month a year, indicating that by 2050 this number could rise to three quarters of the world’s population.

The Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, Ibrahim Thiao, said that global warming is likely to provoke the situation in many regions of the world and that drought is one of the greatest threats to sustainable development.

Johann Flaspart, State Secretary at the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, said at the fifteenth Annual Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in Abidjan, “The world loses every year an area of fertile soil the size of Bulgaria… we have to stop this because  without fertile soil we won’t have food. “

The report added that Europe has also experienced 45 major droughts in the last century, affecting millions of people and causing a total economic loss of $27.8 billion. 15 percent of Europe and about 17 percent of the European Union’s population, according to the report, are currently affected by drought, and the economic loss in the European Union and the United Kingdom is now 9 billion euros a year due to drought.

Amal Farhat