(Newswire.net — August 10, 2019) — About a quarter of the ice-free country has been destroyed by humans, the United Nations scientists warned in a major report Thursday, stressing that further degradation must be stopped to prevent catastrophic global warming.
The warning came almost a year after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded in a report that we have until 2030 to drastically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and prevent the planet from reaching a key threshold temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Another IPCC report highlights the vicious cycle of climate change and land degradation.
Humans affect more than 70 percent of land that is not covered in ice and a quarter of this land has been degraded, the report said. The way we produce food and what we eat contributes to the loss of natural ecosystems and the decline of their biodiversity, the report conclude.
Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of droughts, floods and heat waves, which can irreversibly destroy natural ecosystems and lead to global food shortages.
Deforestation and agriculture are also fueling global warming, weakening the ability of soil to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and emit enormous amounts of greenhouse gasses.
When soil degrades, the soil’s ability to absorb carbon decreases and this exacerbates climate change. In turn, climate change leads to land degradation in many different ways. Today, 500 million people live in areas that have been transformed into deserts, the report said.
Scientists warn that we need to immediately change the way we treat land, produce food and eat less meat to stem the climate crisis.
They again added that there was hope for salvation, such as tree planting, better land management and reduction of food waste.
Humans destroyed land the size of South America
According to the report, humans are destroying the planet’s natural resources with chemical fertilizers, deforestation and intensive agriculture. In the decade long process, people have damaged two billion acres of land, which is the size of South America.
As a result, this soil is less fertile and takes in less carbon from the atmosphere, the CNN reports.
“The way we use the earth is triggering a climate crisis,” said Steven Cornelius, chief advisor to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) for climate change.
Land use, including agriculture and deforestation, produces almost a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Eat less meat
The report emphasizes the need to reduce food waste and reduce meat consumption if we are to reduce global emissions.
Both contribute a significantly to global warming – food waste generates between 8-10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
According to a report, 25 to 30 percent of food produced worldwide is not eaten, while 821 million people across the globe are malnourished.
If we look at the amount of wasted food per country, it would be a third in terms of total gas emissions after the US and China, experts say, adding “it’s scary that over a billion tons of food is not eaten while every ninth person goes to bed hungry.”