UN Sustainable Developent Goal 15

Current global rates of land degradation are unprecedented, with arable land disappearing at a rate over 30 times the pre-industrial rate of land degradation. With a growing global population, this exerts immense pressure on increasingly scarce land to yield sufficient food, with this strain leading to short-term measures such as heavy use of chemical fertilisers, which further degrades arable land.

Desertification and the loss of forests is having devastating impacts on biodiversity, with 8% of the world’s 8300 known animal breeds already extinct and a further 22% considered endangered.