Efforts to restore damaged but once fertile land in Jordan’s desert is sprouting hope for one of the world’s most water-scarce nations, as a land assessment report Wednesday warned of the growing scale of global degradation.
By OMAR AKOUR and WANJOHI KABUKURU
The U.N. desertification agency says 40% of land globally is currently degraded, blaming unsustainable land and water management, poor agricultural practices, mining, urbanization and infrastructure development for the land’s deterioration. “We’re working on the water, we’re working on the green cover and we’re working also with the habitats of the creatures, from insects to animals and all living parts of that ecosystem,” Deyala Tarawneh, a WADI founding member, said. “The success rate of these plants is 85%, which is considered a very high percentage, and they only need to be watered once, which is also reducing the amount of water needed for the irrigation of the green areas.
“The situation we have right now is unhealthy and certainly not acceptable,” Ibrahim Thiaw, the executive secretary of the U.N. desertification agency, told the Associated Press. “The more you degrade land the more you emit carbon and the more you contribute to climate change.” But it also notes that inaction would lead to 16 million square kilometers — nearly the size of the entire South American continent — of land degradation by 2050.
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