RIYADH: Drought costs the world more than $300 billion each year, the United Nations warned Tuesday in a report published on the second day of international talks on desertification in Saudi Arabia.
Fuelled by “human destruction of the environment,” drought is projected to affect 75 percent of the world’s population by 2050, the report cautioned.
It said the crisis has already exceeded $307 billion in costs annually around the globe.
The warning coincides with a 12-day meeting in Riyadh for the 16th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP16) under the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), seeking to protect and restore land and respond to drought amid ongoing climate change.
The UN urged investment in “nature-based solutions” such as “reforestation, grazing management, and the management, restoration and conservation of watersheds” to cut the price of dessication and benefit the environment.
Marked by devastating droughts in Ecuador, Brazil, Namibia, Malawi and nations bordering the Mediterranean, which sparked fires and produced water and food shortages, 2024 is on course to be the hottest year since records began.
“The economic cost of drought extends beyond immediate agricultural losses. It affects entire supply chains, reduces GDP, impacts livelihoods, and leads to hunger, unemployment, migration, and long-term human security challenges,” Kaveh Madani, a co-author of the UN report, said.
“Managing our land and water resources in a sustainable way is essential to stimulate economic growth and strengthen the resilience of communities trapped in cycles of drought,” Andrea Meza Murillo, a senior UNCCD official, said.
“As talks for a landmark COP decision on drought are underway, the report calls on world leaders to recognize the outsized, and preventable, costs of drought, and to leverage proactive and nature-based solutions to secure human development within planetary boundaries,” she added.
UN warns global drought carries $300 billion annual cost
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UN warns global drought carries $300 billion annual cost
- Drought projected to affect 75% of the world’s population by 2050, a UN report cautioned
- The UN urged investment in ‘nature-based solutions’ to cut the price of dessication and benefit the environment
Tajikistan denounces ‘ethnic hatred’ stabbing of schoolboy in Russia
- Authorities in Dushanbe confirmed the victim was Tajik and summoned the Russian ambassador to protest the attack
- The foreign ministry said the attack was “motivated by ethnic hatred“
DUSHANBE, Tajikistan: Tajikistan on Wednesday denounced an “ethnic hatred” attack in Russia, in a rare criticism of its ally a day after a 10-year-old Tajik schoolboy was killed by an older pupil near Moscow.
Russia’s main investigative body, the Investigative Committee, said the 15-year-old suspect was detained and in custody after the attack in Gorki-2, a village west of Moscow in the Odintsovo district.
Authorities in Dushanbe confirmed the victim was Tajik and summoned the Russian ambassador to protest the attack.
The foreign ministry said the attack was “motivated by ethnic hatred.”
The ambassador was handed a note “demanding that Russia conduct an immediate, objective, and impartial investigation into this tragic incident,” the ministry said in a statement.
In a separate statement, the Tajik interior ministry also said it feared the incident would “serve as a pretext for incitement and provocation by certain radical nationalist groups to commit similar crimes.”
The Russian foreign ministry expressed “its deepest condolences to the Tajik side, the families of the deceased, and the victims of the attack,” its spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was quoted as saying on the ministry’s website.
“The Russian side will do everything necessary to ensure an impartial and objective investigation of the incident,” she added.
According to Russian media, including newspapers Komsomolskaya Pravda and Kommersant, the alleged attacker subscribed to neo-Nazi channels and had sent his classmates a racist manifesto a few days before the incident.
Hundreds of thousands of Tajiks work in Russia, many of them holding Russian citizenship.
According to the World Bank, remittances to their relatives back in Tajikistan account for nearly half the GDP of the Central Asian country.
Since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, some Central Asian migrants have looked for work in other countries instead of Russia.
Moscow has tried to recruit Central Asian migrants into the Russian army to fight in Ukraine.
Russia has also hardened its migration policies since a 2024 attack on a concert hall that killed 149 people, with Moscow arresting Tajik citizens over the attack.
