Fear of a Desert Planet

Brad Plumer gives us something more to worry about:

On a related note, the United Nations released a new report today, concluding that a whole bunch of fertile land will probably crumble into desert within the next generation, especially in Africa and Central Asia--creating an "environmental crisis of global proportions." About 50 million people are at risk of displacement. (A fifth of the population of Mali, for instance, already moves to Ivory Coast during drought years.) Some African countries, presumably, will have to give up trying to feed themselves and start importing food. Not all of that is due to climate change, but some of it is.

I had known something along these lines was going on, but 50 million is an awful lot of people when you focus your mind on it.

Photo by Flickr user Gary.Fotu under a Creative Commons license