Successive droughts lead to a substantial and unsustainable expansion of cropland at the expense of forested lands
“Droughts are misery in slow motion” with impacts even deeper than previously believed. Although floods pose major economic threats, water scarcity and drought may be causing long-term harm in ways that are poorly understood and inadequately documented, claims Uncharted waters: the new economics of water scarcity and variability, a report by World Bank that aims at advancing the understanding on “how rainfall shocks coupled with water scarcity impact farms, firms, and families”.
Over the last three decades, 1.8 billion people (about 25 per cent of world population) have experienced abnormal rainfall episodes each year. Unfortunately, variability has disproportionately affected developing nations, with more than 85 per cent of affected people living in low- or middle-income countries.
Link between dry spell, expansion of cropland and dwindling forestland
Over the past decade, the world has lost 2.3 million square kilometres of forested land, of which, 80 per cent of the loss is a direct effect of expanding agricultural lands. “The empirical analysis indicates that dry shocks lead to a substantial expansion of cropland,” says the report. Long period of dryness accounts for about 60 per cent of the rate of expansion in cropland over the past three decades.
This World Bank report raises an alarm by pointing out that current cropland expansion rates are unsustainable in many regions. It also goes on to add that land clearing, which is responsible for about 6–17 per cent of CO2 emissions caused by humans, is already one of the larger contributors to CO2 emissions. Hence, further cropland expansion could have far-reaching consequences for both agricultural production and climate stability, leading to a vicious cycle of land clearing and increased vulnerability to rainfall fluctuations.
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