Desertification and drought day 2025: restoring land to sustain the future
At a time of grand climate pacts, global conferences and sustainability commitments, soil health - the quietest of crises - hardly makes headlines. Yet desertification and drought already affect 3.2 billion people worldwide, according to recent data from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). And every year, tens of millions lose their livelihoods due to the loss of fertile land. Under the theme "Restore the land. Unlock the opportunities", the 2025 observance shines a light on a process that is accelerating as much of the world turns its attention to other urgencies.
Although desertification has historically been linked to arid areas in Africa, the effects of climate change, deforestation, unsustainable land use and pressures on water resources have extended its reach. The 16th UNCCD Conference of the Parties in Riyadh in late 2024 consolidated a broader vision: desertification is not only an ecological problem, but a direct threat to food security, public health and economic stability, as reported in the article “Desertification, Drought, and Planetary Health: UNCCD COP16 and the Future of Land” (The Lancet Planetary Health, 2025).
Under the theme "Restore the land. Unlocking opportunities", the 2025 observance sheds light on a process that is accelerating as much of the world turns its attention to other urgencies
In some countries, a single drought can account for up to 20 per cent of gross domestic product. The article warns that competition for land, water grabbing and lack of planning for events such as slow onset drought is leaving hundreds of millions of people - including half a billion nomadic pastoralists - extremely vulnerable. “By the time you realise there is a drought, it is too late to prepare the response”, said Ibrahim Thiaw, executive secretary of the UNCCD, at one of the COP16 plenary sessions.
One of the most relevant decisions of the conference was the adoption of Decision 16/28 on Land Tenure, which recognises secure access to land as an essential condition for the health, nutrition and sustainability of agrifood systems. Equity in land ownership, especially for women and indigenous communities, was identified as one of the keys to advancing durable policies. According to Thiaw, less than 20% of women own land, despite representing almost half of the agricultural labour force and producing up to 80% of food in developing countries.
COP16 also opened the door to a re-reading of the role of agriculture. Decision 16/19 on Agricultural Lands incorporated for the first time explicit criteria on soil health as an indicator of sustainability. The degradation of agricultural land not only reduces productive capacity, but also increases food insecurity and multiplies forced migrations. As Thiaw himself summarised: "There can be no food security if we continue to degrade land.”
In this context, science has begun to occupy a more central place in policy-making. This is analysed in the article “Assessing the Impact of Science in the Implementation of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification” (Land, 2022), which assesses the role of the UNCCD's Science-Policy Interface (SPI) since its creation in 2013. The SPI has made it possible to integrate technical knowledge into the Convention's decision-making documents, improve monitoring indicators and promote synergies with other conventions such as those on biodiversity or climate change. Its strengthening, the authors conclude, is essential to ensure that scientific knowledge has a real impact on policy decisions affecting soil, water and the lives of local communities.
The phenomenon of desertification can no longer be understood as an isolated threat or as a problem exclusive to certain latitudes. It has a cross-cutting impact on multiple dimensions of human well-being: health, employment, nutrition, access to water, security. For this reason, and although COP16 did not manage to conclude a specific binding instrument on drought, the decisions taken on land ownership, agriculture and youth participation point to a more comprehensive redesign of land policies.
Water that doesn't flow: drought as the visible face of desertification
One of the most immediate effects of desertification is the decrease in useful runoff and the progressive disappearance of springs and intermittent watercourses
At the heart of the desertification process is a resource whose scarcity is becoming increasingly tangible: water. As Enrique Delgado Huertos underlines in his paper “Deforestation and desertification: two faces of the same problem” (in Spanish), the decrease of water availability in degraded areas is not only a climatic consequence, but also a manifestation of the loss of ecological functionality of ecosystems. Where the soil has lost its vegetation cover and its capacity to retain water, rainfall - when it occurs - runs off without being absorbed, feeding torrents that erode rather than irrigate.
One of the most immediate effects of desertification is the decrease in useful runoff and the progressive disappearance of intermittent springs and watercourses. According to the author, between 1940 and 1990, more than a thousand permanent watercourses disappeared in Spain and became intermittent or seasonal. This is not just a question of reduced rainfall, but of a profound alteration of the hydrological cycle caused by deforestation, erosion and soil compaction.
In this context, drought acts as both catalyst and symptom. It manifests itself with greater frequency, intensity and duration in regions where the land has lost its water infiltration and storage capacity. And where there is less water, vegetation is reduced, the soil is more exposed and the process feeds back on itself. Delgado Huertos insists that this “downward spiral” cannot be tackled by surface water management alone, but requires comprehensive hydrological-forestry restoration that includes soil recovery, intelligent reforestation and appropriate land-use management.
The author also points out that many of the current irrigation systems, far from reversing the problem, intensify it. In arid and semi-arid areas, the massive use of groundwater—extracted beyond its recharge capacity–has led to the depletion of aquifers, as is the case in the southeast of Spain. Furthermore, the intensive use of phytosanitary products, together with the impoverishment of the soil, has contaminated part of these resources, thus closing a circle in which each component aggravates the next.
Drought acts with greater frequency, intensity and duration in regions where the land has lost its water infiltration and storage capacity
The role of forests in this respect cannot be underestimated. Not only do they regulate the local climate and favour the condensation of atmospheric humidity, but they also act as sponges capable of infiltrating rainwater into deep aquifers. Deforestation disrupts this balance. Where vegetation cover has disappeared, soils lose porosity, harden, erode and cease to fulfil their function as a water reserve. It is precisely this intimate connection between soil, water and vegetation that makes desertification more than a physical process: it is, as Delgado points out, "an ecological imbalance with profound social consequences”.
In this sense, looking at degraded land should not only lead us to the diagnosis of an environmental catastrophe, but also to a way of understanding how we have lived and managed the resources that sustain life. Desertification and drought are not new realities, but today they are intertwined with global dynamics that accelerate and extend them beyond the landscapes we traditionally associate with arid. Recovery will not be immediate or simple, but neither is it a chimera: it requires sustained political will, technical knowledge rooted in local knowledge, and a revaluation of the soil as a common heritage. Restoring the land, as this year's theme proposes, means restoring its dignity and its capacity to sustain life. This may be one of the few shared certainties of our time.