From 9 to 20 May, COP15 Against Desertification welcomes leaders of 197 countries to Abidjan, Cte d’Ivoire. Qualified as “the greatest environmental challenge of our time”, desertification already affects 500 million people in 168 countries and a third of the planet’s surfaces. A phenomenon that is accelerating, especially with global warming. Or when the ground slips under the feet of humanity…

Why is soil important? Soil, the planet’s living epidermis, provides 99% of the food on which humanity depends. Overexploited by human activities, it is eroding, drying up and being exhausted: according to the United Nations, 40% of the world’s land is already degraded, affecting half the world’s population. Intensive agriculture, which accounts for 90% of global deforestation, has been set aside.

Faced with this global soil degradation, drylands – which comprise nearly half of the world’s land – are particularly vulnerable. With global warming, the phenomenon is getting faster and faster – historically, land degradation is occurring 30 to 35 times faster than today. Continuing this momentum, by 2050 an additional area equivalent to that of South America could be degraded.