Home > Sheet2 A B 1 Selected Examples of Desertification Around the World 2 3 Country Extent
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| 1 | Selected Examples of Desertification Around the World | |
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| 3 | Country | Extent of Desertification |
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| 5 | Afghanistan | In the Sistan basin, windblown dust and sand have buried more than 100 villages. In the northwest, along the Amu Darya River, a sand dune belt that is some 186 miles (298 kilometers) long and 19 miles wide is expanding by up to 3 feet (1 meter) a day. |
| 6 | Brazil | Approximately 224,000 square miles of land have been affected. Economic losses associated with desertification are estimated at $300 million a year. |
| 7 | China | Nationwide, deserts are expanding by 1,400 square miles a year. Some 400 million Chinese are affected by the dust storms of late winter and early spring. |
| 8 | India | Various forms of desertification affect 413,000 square miles, one third of India’s land area. |
| 9 | Iran | In the eastern provinces of Baluchistan and Sistan, some 124 villages have been buried by drifting sand. |
| 10 | Kenya | More than 80 percent of its land is vulnerable to desertification, affecting up to a third of the country’s 35 million people and half its livestock. |
| 11 | Mexico | Some 70 percent of all land in Mexico is vulnerable to desertification. Land degradation prompts some 700,000 Mexicans to leave the land each year in search of jobs in Mexican cities or the United States. |
| 12 | Nigeria | Each year some 1,400 square miles of land are lost to desertification, which affects each of the 10 northern states. |
| 13 | Yemen | Some 97 percent of the land in this country of 21 million people shows some degree of desertification. |
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| 15 | Key: 1 mile = 1.6 kilometers; 1 meter = 3.3 feet. | |
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| 17 | Source: Lester R. Brown, Outgrowing the Earth: The Food Security Challenge in an Age of Falling Water Tables and Rising Temperatures (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005), pp. 86-87; population data updated from United Nations, World Population Prospect | |
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| 22 | For more information from Earth Policy Institute, see www.earthpolicy.org | |
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