Desertification and Drylands Crisis
Productive land is turning to desert across the Sahel, Central Asia and northern China.
Severity score
55.0
Severe · default weighting
Trajectory
Worsening
What this is
Overgrazing, deforestation, poor irrigation and warming are converting drylands into unproductive land. The result is loss of livelihood, migration into cities and, in the Sahel, a recruitment pipeline for armed groups. Restoration projects exist but operate far below the scale of loss.
Score breakdown
Loss of life
18Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.
Lives negatively impacted
80People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.
Financial cost
58Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.
Environmental impact
76Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.
Trajectory
66Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.