Soil Degradation
A third of the world topsoil is degraded and it forms far slower than it is lost.
Severity score
58.6
Severe · default weighting
Trajectory
Worsening
What this is
Erosion, salinisation, compaction and nutrient depletion reduce yields across a third of agricultural land. Soil forms at a rate measured in centuries per centimetre, so losses are effectively permanent within any planning horizon. Yield decline drives both hunger and land conversion.
Score breakdown
Each factor is a 0–100 relative severity index, not the raw figure or a specific time period. The actual counts and periods are listed under "Standardized Impact" on the right.
Loss of life
14Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.
Lives negatively impacted
88People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.
Financial cost
66Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.
Environmental impact
84Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.
Trajectory
66Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.
Audit trail
Everything this entry has been through — when it was first searched for, queued, reviewed and approved, and how its figures and rank have moved since.
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