4) World's soil in danger (This is a big dated, to 1995, but needless to say desertification is a real danger to the global population. That includes the USA where drought has been sustained for some time now. It is my estimation, by now, every country should have engaged in a soil assessment in 'Sustainability.' The United Nations would be wise to 'summit' and bring inventories to global prominence to enhance 'sustainability' studies relying on food production in a rapidly heating world.)
Globally speaking, what kind of situation is soil in? Cutting of forests and nontraditional slash-and-bum cultivation in the tropics, and excessive grazing of livestock in arid regions, causes the loss of vegeta-tion in the topsoil, and results in severe wind-and rain-caused soil erosion. Moreover, of the world's total fertile soil, some forecast that one-third of that will have lost its fertility by the year 2000.
A typical example of this kind of soil degradation is the concept of desertification. Desertification is defined in Article 1 of the Treaty to Prevent Desertification as "land degradation caused by a variety of factors (including climate change and human activities) in arid, semi-arid, and arid/semi-humid regions." This situation is discussed further in Chapter 5, but as of 1991, districts affected by desertification extended to about 70% of the world's arid regions, or about 3.6 billion hectares....
