Dear John
This week we have launched our new report, Dried Up Futures: How population growth is driving drought, land degradation, and desertification.
You can read my blog summarising its findings here.
The report features three sections on drought, land degradation, and desertification. These issues don’t typically make headlines, remaining unseen crises shaping the lives of millions of people.
Drought has plagued the Horn of Africa since 2020, affecting 100 million people, and future high population growth in the region will worsen the impacts further. Desertification is a form of land degradation, the process by which land deteriorates until it’s economically unproductive and effectively “dead” soil. Ever more people place greater pressure on the land, resulting in more areas of the world than ever undergoing desertification.
The relationship between drought and desertification being driven by population growth has been studied and is well understood, yet addressing population is often left out of solutions. The report outlines the evidence and brings to the forefront the positive solutions, such as empowering women and funding Population Health Environment (PHE) projects, to address population and combat drought and
desertification.
We’ll be sending this report to governments, the media, and organisations working to end drought and desertification, to get PHE higher up the agenda of recognised solutions. This report follows on from our campaign directed at the UK government to fund PHE, you can find out more about this here.
The process of writing this report was eye-opening. Drought and desertification claim more lives and cause more economic losses than any other environmental crises. But the solutions are there. We’d love your support in sharing this report as widely as you can. | 
