The Business Recorder reports on a study presented at a recent UN conference which has found that loss of land through desertification and drought costs up to five percent of world agricultural gross domestic product (AGDP), or some $450 billion (340 billion euros), annually.
Each year an area roughly three times the size of Switzerland is lost through soil degradation, it said, as 870 million people suffer from chronic hunger. Between four and 12 percent of Africa's AGDP is lost due to degraded land annually, and in Guatemala the figure is 24 percent, the report said.
The Business Recorder report can be found here and more informaiton about the UN conference is available here.
