Abstract
Hyperarid, arid, semiarid, and dry subhumid areas cover approximately 41% of the global land area. The human population in drylands, currently estimated at 2.7 billion, faces limited access to sufficient, affordable, and nutritious food. We discuss the interlinkages among water security, environmental security, energy security, economic security, health security, and food security governance, and how they affect food security in drylands. Reliable and adequate water supply, and the prevention of water contamination, increase the potential for ample food, fodder, and fiber production. Protecting woodlands and rangelands increases food security by buffering the slow onset effects of climate change, including biodiversity loss, desertification, salinization, and land degradation. The protection of natural lands is expected to decrease environmental contamination, and simultaneously, reduce the transfer of diseases from wildlife to humans. Biofuel production and hydroelectric power plants increase energy security but generate land-use conflicts, deforestation, and ecosystem degradation. Economic security generally positively correlates with food security. However, economic growth often degrades the environment, changes tenure rights over natural resources, and stimulates migration to urban areas, resulting in lower food and health security. Moreover, civil unrest, political instability, and armed conflicts disrupt local economies in drylands. Maintaining food security is crucial for health security; conversely, malnourished populations and unresponsive health systems decrease economic security, and adversely affect environmental, energy, and food security. Climate change is expected to deteriorate health security by spreading vector-borne diseases. Effective governance and timely interventions can substantially shorten periods of food insecurity, lower their intensities, and accelerate recovery from inevitable crises, and are therefore crucial in preventing humanitarian crises. Since global drylands population will nearly double by 2050, and since drylands are among the most susceptible areas to climate change, integrated multi-hazard approaches to food security are needed.
Highlights
Drylands, including hyperarid, arid, semiarid, and dry subhumid areas, cover approximately 41% of the global land area [1]; the greatest coverage is in low-income countries [2].Drylands exist in all continents and are inhabited by approximately 40% of the globe’s population, encompassing 2.7 billion people, a number that is expected to increase by up to50% by 2050 [3], mostly in the African and Asian drylands
Land-use change is responsible for approximately 22% of the global emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs); 13% of the total GHGs are emitted from newly converted lands
As climate change is likely to increase the frequency of pandemics in the future [80], ensuring access to nutritionally adequate diets should gain a particular urgency in the context of public health [81]
Summary
Drylands, including hyperarid, arid, semiarid, and dry subhumid areas, cover approximately 41% of the global land area [1]; the greatest coverage is in low-income countries [2]. Coupled with land tenure changes, land degradation across the world’s drylands has been mainly attributed to land misuse, deforestation, excessive fuelwood collection, agricultural malpractices, overgrazing, mining, industrialization, and urbanization These processes have contributed to secondary salinization, biodiversity loss, natural resources pollution, and a subsequent decline of related ecosystem services [5]. In 2011, the concept of slow onset effects ( named slow onset events) was launched as a deliverable at the seventeenth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 17) on loss and damage, in order to more precisely classify the effects of climatic change These include increasing temperatures, sea level rise, ocean acidification, glacial retreat, salinization, land and forest degradation, loss of biodiversity, and desertification [10]. It outlines and maps key interactions among them and illustrates how slow onset events of climate change affect these interactions
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