Desertification around the world... "Global warming is the main culprit."

[Anchor]
According to a UN agency survey, about 40% of the world's land has become dry.

This is because desertification has accelerated over the past 30 years.

Reporter Hwang Bo-sun reports.

[Report]
Pergusa Lake on the Italian island of Sicily.

It is so thin that it is worse than a pond.

This is because the drought is getting severe every year.

The other lakes have been drained for a long time.

The reason why sheep move around in groups is to find a few drops of water.

The number of desertifying lands is increasing like this.

According to data released at the United Nations Conference on the Prevention of Desertification (UNCCD) (COP16), about three-quarters of the world's land, or one-third of India's land, has become drier over the past 30 years.

As a result, 40.6% of the Earth's land is in dry areas where farming is almost impossible, and 2.2 billion people are affected.

This land drying is expected to accelerate further.

[Sergio Vincent Serrano / Pyrenees Institute of Ecology, Spain] More than 4 billion people will live in dry areas.]


The main culprit for the spread of dry areas is global warming.

This means that the areas where evaporation increases and rainfall decreases are getting wider.

[Sergio Vincent Serrano / Pyrenees Institute of Ecology, Spain: Dryness has a huge impact on our lives, ecosystems, and water conditions]

The European Union and the EU's climate change watchdog, the Copernicus Climate Change Institute, analyzed that the average global temperature increase will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius for the first time this year compared to pre-industrial times.

It broke through the limits of climate disaster set by the Paris Climate Change Convention in 2015.

This is YTN Hwang Bo-seon.