Each year at least 100 million hectares of land lose part of their ability to grow food and support life, and the share of degraded land rose between 2015 and 2019 even as countries pledged to restore more than a billion hectares.
Updated October 14, 2026. Written from the sources listed below, not independently peer-reviewed.
Between 2015 and 2019, how much healthy, productive land became degraded worldwide each year, at a minimum?
15.5%
Share of land degraded
Share of total land area that was degraded in 2019, up from 11.3% in 2015. Compiled from national reports to the UNCCD; not all countries reported, so this is a partial estimate.
Data year 2019. Source: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2025
1.7 billion
People living where degradation cuts crop yields
People living in areas where crop yields are about 10% lower because of human-induced land degradation, including 47 million stunted children under five. This is a modelled estimate by FAO.
Data year 2025. Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2025
1.5 billion ha
Land to restore for a degradation-neutral world
Area that would need to be restored by 2030 to reach land degradation neutrality if current trends continue. Voluntary national pledges cover over 1 billion hectares, about two-thirds of this.
Data year 2025. Source: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2025
Unit: % of total land area
Global estimates compiled by the UN from national reports to the UNCCD under SDG indicator 15.3.1. Countries report every four years, and not all countries reported, so these are partial estimates; figures for later years have not yet been published.
SDG target 15.3 aims for a land degradation-neutral world by 2030, meaning that new degradation is avoided or balanced by restoration. Instead, the share of degraded land rose from 11.3% to 15.5% between 2015 and 2019. Reaching the target would require restoring about 1.5 billion hectares by 2030. Countries have pledged to restore more than 1 billion hectares, about two-thirds of that, but the UN reports that restoration on the ground is advancing too slowly and funding of USD 66 billion a year covers only 18% of estimated needs.
Sub-Saharan Africa, Western and Southern Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean are degrading faster than the global average. Since 2015, sub-Saharan Africa has lost about 163 million hectares and Latin America and the Caribbean about 108 million hectares to degradation.
Source: United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, 2023Eastern and Central Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean have the most severe degradation, affecting at least 20% of their land area.
Source: United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, 2023In absolute numbers, the people most affected by falling crop yields live in Asia, where long-accumulated degradation meets high population density.
Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2025Degradation is concentrated where food is grown: more than 60% of it occurs on agricultural land, so the damage falls directly on the farmers and herders who depend on that land.
Source: United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, 2026Each country is shaded by its latest available value, so you can see where the gap is widest. Hover or tap a country, search for one, or open the full table.
Loading country values…
Values in % of land area.
Share of each country's land area that was degraded in 2019 (SDG indicator 15.3.1), as reported by governments to the UNCCD; darker means more degraded land. All values are for 2019. Countries use different national data and methods, so comparisons between countries are rough, and many large countries, including Brazil, the United States, Russia, Egypt and Kenya, did not report and appear as no data.
Source: UNCCD national reports (SDG 15.3.1), via Our World in Data. Latest year available per country; years differ.
Values load from Our World in Data. Simplified Natural Earth borders; they imply no position on disputed territories.
Instead of one “percent solved” score, DO GOOD rates three separate dimensions. A problem can have mature solutions that still reach too few people. These ratings are an editorial reading of the sources on this page, not a measured index.
Has the situation improved in the real world?
LowThe share of degraded land rose from 11.3% to 15.5% between 2015 and 2019, and at least 100 million hectares were degraded each year. A few countries, such as Botswana and the Dominican Republic, reported large reductions.
How mature and validated are the available solutions?
ModerateSustainable land management and restoration methods are well known and, according to the UN, each dollar invested yields USD 7 to 30 in benefits. How well they work depends heavily on local conditions, and they cannot offset the drying caused by climate change.
How widely are effective solutions actually used?
LowAnnual funding of about USD 66 billion covers only 18% of estimated needs, and restoration on the ground lags far behind the more than 1 billion hectares pledged.
The official figures come from countries' own reports, and not all countries reported or covered every measure, so the UNCCD treats them as partial. Estimates in the scientific literature range from 10% to 40% of global land, depending on definitions and methods.
Degradation grew faster than restoration in 2015–2019, and the UNCCD warns that continuing at the reported rate would add 1.1 billion hectares of degraded land by 2030, while more land is becoming drier.
Land is degraded when it loses part of its biological or economic productivity: soils erode or lose organic matter, vegetation thins out, or natural land is converted in ways that reduce what it can provide. Most of this damage comes from how land is used and managed, and more than 60% of it occurs on farmland. Based on national reports from 126 countries, the UN estimates that the share of degraded land rose from 11.3% of total land area in 2015 to 15.5% in 2019, with at least 100 million hectares degraded each year. Studies using other methods put the share higher, with most estimates around a quarter of all land. Drylands are also getting larger: more than three-quarters of the world's land was drier in the three decades to 2020 than in the 30 years before, and drylands expanded by about 4.3 million square kilometres.
The losses fall on people who live directly from the land. FAO estimates that about 1.7 billion people live in areas where crop yields are about 10% lower because of human-induced land degradation, among them 47 million children under five who are stunted. Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean are degrading faster than the global average and together lost about 271 million hectares to degradation between 2015 and 2019. The UN links land degradation to poverty, food insecurity, poorer health and migration, and the official monitoring report says it undermines the well-being of 3.2 billion people.
SDG target 15.3 asks countries to combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, and strive for a land degradation-neutral world by 2030. Progress is tracked with SDG indicator 15.3.1, the share of land that is degraded, which countries report to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). It is built from three measures:
Land cover
Changes in what covers the land, for example forest or grassland turned into cropland, or farmland turned into settlements. Some conversions count as degradation because they reduce what the land can provide.
Land productivity
Trends in how much plant growth the land supports, estimated from satellite-based vegetation indices. A lasting decline signals that soil, water or vegetation are deteriorating.
Carbon stocks in soil
Changes in soil organic carbon, a key sign of soil health and fertility. Soil carbon changes slowly, so four-yearly reporting may not reliably detect change, and countries without national data can use default estimates provided by the UNCCD and its partners, which national authorities then validate.
One out, all out
A piece of land counts as degraded if any one of the three measures shows a decline, unless national evidence shows otherwise. The baseline is 2015, using data for 2000–2015, and countries report every four years, so the latest published global figure is for 2019.
What works
Countries set targets to avoid new degradation and to balance unavoidable losses with restoration elsewhere. By 2023, 109 countries had set voluntary targets for 2030 and 21 more were preparing them; about USD 5 billion in bilateral and multilateral funding supported such efforts between 2016 and 2019.
Limits
The targets are voluntary and not legally binding, and reported progress is uneven. Funding is small compared with the area involved.
What works
Practices such as reducing tillage, keeping soil covered, rotating crops, agroforestry and careful use of water protect soil and keep yields up. FAO estimates that reversing just 10% of human-induced degradation on existing cropland could restore enough production to feed an additional 154 million people every year.
Limits
Benefits often take years to appear, while costs come first, which is hard for farmers without secure land rights, credit or advice. What works depends on soil, climate and crops.
What works
Rehabilitating degraded areas through revegetation, grazing management and erosion control can reverse decline. Botswana reported cutting the share of its degraded land from 36% to 17%, and the Dominican Republic from 49% to 31% between 2015 and 2019.
Limits
These figures are national self-assessments and are not independently verified. Restoration is slow, and gains can be lost in drought years or if pressure on the land returns.
What works
Planting drought-tolerant shrubs and trees can stabilise soils and reduce dust where land has dried out. Uzbekistan, where about 3 million hectares were degraded by the drying of the Aral Sea, planted saxaul shrubs on 1.6 million hectares between 2018 and 2022.
Limits
Plantings in drylands often fail without enough water and long-term care, and planting trees where they do not naturally grow can harm grasslands and use scarce water.
Promising, but not proven at scale. The stage shows how far each approach has come; it is not a recommendation.
Satellite images let countries track changes in land cover and plant growth over large areas, and the official indicator already relies on Earth observation data. Tools that turn these images into national maps of degradation are in use, but results still need checking on the ground, especially for soil carbon.
Some programmes pay farmers for practices meant to increase carbon in the soil, which could fund better land management. Measuring soil carbon changes reliably and cheaply is difficult, and gains can be reversed, so the approach remains contested.
Instead of reacting to each drought with emergency aid, some countries are building drought plans, early warning systems and insurance to act before losses mount. With 40% of global land seeing more frequent and severe droughts in recent decades, interest is growing, but many plans exist only on paper.
Implementation gap
The UNCCD estimates that combating desertification, land degradation and drought requires about USD 1 billion a day between 2025 and 2030. Current funding of about USD 66 billion a year meets only 18% of estimated needs.
Implementation gap
Countries have pledged to restore more than 1 billion hectares, but the UN reports that restoration on the ground is advancing too slowly to reach land degradation neutrality by 2030.
Knowledge gap
Only 126 of the UNCCD's 197 parties reported degradation data in 2022, and not all reported every measure. Figures are compiled as received, and published global estimates range from 10% to 40% of land depending on the method.
Coordination gap
More than three-quarters of the world's land was drier in the three decades to 2020 than before, and 40% of land has seen more frequent and severe droughts. Better land management alone cannot counter this without cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
Coordination gap
Governments have not agreed on a joint international approach to drought. At the 2026 UNCCD conference in Mongolia, decisions on drought and on migration were postponed to the next conference, in 2028.
Technology gap
Soil organic carbon changes slowly, so the official indicator's four-yearly reporting may not detect change reliably in many countries. Where national data are missing, countries can fall back on default global estimates, which makes it hard to see whether land management on the ground is working.
Unresolved questions, not vetted breakthroughs. Answering any of them would change what is possible.
Why do estimates range from 10% to 40% of global land, and can countries agree on methods and baselines that give comparable, verifiable figures?
At what point do drying and degradation push drylands and rangelands into a state from which they cannot recover on their own, and can this be detected early?
Which land management practices raise yields and protect soil quickly enough to be worthwhile for smallholders with little land, capital or security of tenure?
How can monitoring separate damage caused by local land use from the effects of a drying climate, so that policies target the right causes?
Food that is thrown away still used land, water and soil to grow. Buying and cooking what you will eat reduces the land needed for your diet, though the effect on any particular field is indirect.
If you have a garden or allotment, composting, keeping soil covered with plants or mulch, and avoiding bare ground all help build soil organic matter on a small scale.
Organisations that work with farmers and herders to restore land are one way to contribute. Prefer groups that work with local communities, report what survives years later rather than how many trees were planted, and publish independent evaluations.
Agricultural subsidies and development aid shape how land is used. Asking your representatives how their country's farm policies and aid budget support soil protection and restoration adds pressure for the funding gap to be closed.
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United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), Statistics Division, published 2025
The UN's official annual progress report on the SDGs. The 2026 edition's Goal 15 chapter does not cover land degradation, so this is the latest official summary. Source of the 100 million hectares degraded each year, the rise from 11.3% to 15.5% in 2015–2019, the 3.2 billion people, the 1.5 billion hectares to restore, pledges of over 1 billion hectares (two-thirds of need), returns of USD 7–30 per dollar, needs of USD 1 billion a day and funding of USD 66 billion (18% of needs).
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Newsroom (3 November 2025), published 2025
Launch release for The State of Food and Agriculture 2025. Source of the 1.7 billion people living where yields are about 10% lower due to human-induced degradation, the 47 million stunted children under five, Asia as most affected in absolute numbers, and the 154 million people who could be fed by reversing 10% of degradation on cropland.
United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), report by the Executive Secretary (8 July 2026), published 2026
Official document for the UNCCD science committee at COP17. Source of the estimate that around a quarter of global land is degraded (literature range 10–40%), the share on agricultural land (over 60%), the projected additional 1.1 billion hectares by 2030, the drying of over three-quarters of land in the three decades to 2020, the 4.3 million km² expansion of drylands and the 40% of land with more frequent and severe drought.
United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), press release (24 October 2023), published 2023
Launch of the UNCCD data dashboard built from the 2022 national reports of 126 parties, the latest global reporting round published. Source of regional figures (163 and 108 million hectares lost since 2015, at least 20% degraded in Eastern and Central Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean), country examples (Botswana, the Dominican Republic, Uzbekistan), the 109 countries with targets and USD 5 billion in funding, and the caveats on data completeness.
United Nations Statistics Division, custodian agency UNCCD (last updated 29 July 2024), published 2024
Official definition and method of the SDG indicator. Source of the definitions of land degradation and land degradation neutrality, the three sub-indicators (land cover, land productivity and carbon stocks), the one-out-all-out rule, the 2015 baseline using 2000–2015 data, reporting every four years and the use of Earth observation data.
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (28 August 2026), published 2026
Statement at the close of the UNCCD conference in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Source of the postponement of agenda items on drought and migration to COP18 in 2028 and of the roughly USD 1.3 billion pledged for drought mitigation and land restoration.