![]() ![]() More than 60 million people, or 40% of these countries’ population, live in drylands. Drylands occupy around 2 million km² or respectively 90%, 75%, and 67% of Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia respectively. Challenges connected to demographics and climate change. However, due to a variety of factors, this method has changed and been constrained. Pastoralists use strategic movement to gain access to pasture during the dry season, using the available resources effectively. ![]() Pastoralists who rely on cattle for both economic and social well-being constitute the majority of rural inhabitants in the drylands. The East African drylands cover about 47% of land areas and are home to around 20 million people. The UN Conference on Sustainable Development Rio+20, held in Brazil in June 2012, stressed the intrinsic value of biological diversity and recognized the severity of global biodiversity loss and degradation of ecosystems. Dryland biodiversity is equally of central importance as to ensuring sustainable development, along with providing significant global economic values through the provision of ecosystem services and biodiversity products. Dryland inhabitants' lifestyle provides global environmental benefits which contribute to halt climate change, such as carbon sequestration and species conservation. Drylands, unlike more humid biomes, rely mostly on above ground water runoff for redistribution of water, and almost all their water redistribution occurs on the surface. The livelihoods of millions of people in developing countries depend highly on dryland biodiversity to ensure their food security and their well-being. ĭrylands are complex, evolving structures whose characteristics and dynamic properties depend on many interrelated interactions between climate, soil, and vegetation. Nevertheless, the United States, Australia, and several countries in Southern Europe also contain significant dryland areas. There is a significantly greater proportion of drylands in developing countries (72%), and the proportion increases with aridity: almost 100% of all hyper-arid lands are in the developing world. The UNCCD excludes hyper-arid zones from its definition of drylands.ĭrylands cover 41.3% of the earth's land surface, including 15% of Latin America, 66% of Africa, 40% of Asia, and 24% of Europe. Some authorities regard hyper-arid lands as deserts ( United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification - UNCCD) although a number of the world's deserts include both hyper-arid and arid climate zones. One can classify drylands into four sub-types: The United Nations Environment Program defines drylands as tropical and temperate areas with an aridity index of less than 0.65. ![]() Drylands are zones where precipitation is balanced by evaporation from surfaces and by transpiration by plants ( evapotranspiration). For the premium office space provider, see Dryland (club).ĭrylands are defined by a scarcity of water. ![]()
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