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Issue 1/2026, Business and economics, In this issue
How to combat desertification for the benefit of society and the economy
Jan
Desertification threatens 126 countries today, Chinese scientists are warning, proposing an ambitious new strategy to bring the world closer to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. It focuses, in contrast to the short-term priorities of greening degraded areas, on implementing innovative agricultural practices.
Desertification – a problem that is growing exponentially
Climate change and human activity are two of the main causes of ongoing soil degradation, which already affects 24 percent of the total land area. Studies conducted so far show that desertification threatens the stability of ecosystems and the well-being of 35 percent of the global population. The problem affects as much as 44 percent of China’s territory – unfortunately, initiatives implemented since the 1970s have had limited success, and the Chinese economy continues to lose $4.7-13.8 billion due to desertification. annually.
The authors of the study, the results of which were published on December 29, 2025 in the scientific journal PNAS,question the effectiveness of the strategies commonly implemented today not only in China, but also in the Sahel region and Saudi Arabia. In their view, unconditional afforestation and the withdrawal of land from agricultural production are unpromising solutions that further threaten socioeconomic stability.
Chinese case study
The study’s authors used years of climatic, topographical and socioeconomic data to assess the methods used to date to combat desertification in the Middle Kingdom. China launched the Grain-for-Green program in 1999 to reduce soil degradation and flood risk. Under the initiative, millions of farmers were compensated for converting degraded arable land into grasslands and forests. At the same time, the first two decades of the 21st century saw an intensive campaign to retire pasture land.
The analysis shows that despite concentrated efforts by the Chinese, only 2 percent of their country’s arable land had been rehabilitated by 2022, while nearly 24 percent of the land remained in poor condition, making cultivation impossible. While sheep populations increased, with more than 51 percent of them grazing on natural grasslands, more than 12 percent of livestock remained dependent on degraded pastures. According to the researchers, these results point to shortcomings in the existing strategy to combat desertification.
What’s more, models based on climate data from the past two decades have shown that if the Grain-for-Green program were implemented at full scale, annual grain production would fall by 26 percent, and farmers’ annual income in desert-prone regions would decrease by more than 46 percent.
Improved strategy to combat desertification
Discussion of long-term soil support strategies cannot be conducted in isolation from climatic realities. Therefore, Chinese researchers have developed three scenarios of atmospheric changes that could occur by 2050, assuming low, medium and high levels of increase in average temperatures. They used these to estimate the likely effects of implementing various strategies to combat desertification – from conventional greening of degraded areas to more complex agricultural land management models.
The analysis showed that converting eroded wastelands into green spaces offers the hope of reducing the regional water deficit by about 20 percent, but at the same time reduces crop production by 21-23 percent and livestock production by 6-7 percent. Models involving converting degraded arable land into natural grassland, poor arable land into cultivated pasture, and shifting crops to arable land of medium or high suitability proved to be much more economically viable. The synergistic benefits of such a solution are associated with an increase in yields by up to 4.3 percent and agricultural income by more than 20.5 percent.
With a view to sustainable regional development
Desertification is not only an environmental problem, but also a major obstacle to achieving sustainable development, exacerbating poverty and water deficits and threatening food security in arid and semi-arid regions. The traditional approach of greening the eroded wasteland brings many benefits, but does not guarantee improvements in socioeconomic indicators.
Researchers representing the Chinese Academy of Sciences have prepared a new, scalable framework to facilitate decision-making to combat desertification that integrates statistical algorithms with empirical data and extensive environmental datasets. After incorporating 95 biophysical variables, they were able to create precise maps of the yield potential of major crops, natural grasslands and cultivated pastures.
The approach proposed by Chinese researchers can easily be transferred to the topographical and climatic realities of other regions of the world. Observations made on the local ground show that advanced agricultural practices – especially shifting cultivation and pasture cultivation on marginal arable land – can simultaneously counteract ecological degradation and improve rural livelihoods by reducing fiscal burdens.
Optimizing the distribution of crops and cropland pasture promotes a number of Sustainable Development Goals: Ending Poverty (SDG 1), Zero Hunger (SDG 2), Clean Water and Sanitation (SDG 6), and in addition, through international synergies, can support inequality reduction (SDG 11), responsible production and consumption (SDG 12), climate action (SDG 13) and life on land (SDG 15). The biggest challenge in this regard remains reconciling competing sustainability goals in a resource-constrained environment, which requires coordinated efforts by communities, institutions and governments based on high-resolution environmental data, reliable climate projections and regional socioeconomic assessments.
In the article, I used:
X. Wang,X. Geng,F. Sun,M. Han,F. Chen,S. Chen,J. Peñuelas,L. Gao,B. A. Bryan,C. Li,L.C. Stringer,J. Ye,S. Chen,J. Sun,H. Lu,H. Che,H. Liu,B. Liu,Z. Dong,[…] & Z. Dong, Strategies reimagined: SDG-driven solutions for combating global desertification, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 123 (1) e2515470123, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2515470123 (2026)
