Increasing threat from desertification

Damian Carrington writes in the Guardian

Desertification and land degradation is "the greatest environmental challenge of our time" and "a threat to global wellbeing", according to the UN's top drylands official, Luc Gnacadja, who says people must be paid via global carbon markets for preserving the soil. The executive secretary of UN's Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), will today launch the UN decade for the fight against desertification in London.

"The top 20cm of soil is all that stands between us and extinction,"

he told the Guardian. Conflicts and food price crises all stem from the degradation of land, he added