LocationsHow the Land Speaks of Aridity and What We Can Do
December 5, 2025
Communities across Asia and the Pacific, with climate change, are experiencing extreme dryness, and the first signs always appear in the soil. Moisture is lost earlier each season; topsoil becomes loose and dusty, vegetation thins, and land that once supported crops or grazing becomes fragile.
In the world, 77% of land has become drier in recent decades, and drylands now cover 40.6% of the Earth’s land surface. The number of people living in drylands has doubled to 2.3 billion, and this may reach 5 billion by 2100.
The Challenges: Dry Soil, Failing Livelihoods, and New Pressures
For people living in these conditions, the reality of dry soil and frequent sand and dust storms is part of daily life. In many communities, storms can darken the sky within minutes, forcing families indoors as fine particles seep into homes, cover food and water, and make it difficult to breathe. Farmers describe watching their topsoil lift away on windy days, while herders navigate landscapes that shift from familiar pasture to bare, wind-scoured ground. Even routine tasks, tending animals, gathering water, travelling to markets, become unpredictable when storms intensify. The land’s decline is not abstract for them; it shapes the rhythm of their days and the stability of their livelihoods.
In Asia alone, 36.1% of land has already turned into drylands. Countries like Mongolia, Iran, China, India, and Pakistan are facing severe soil degradation, water scarcity, and rising sand and dust storms. Drylands are rapidly losing soil and fertility.
77% of Mongolia’s land is already degraded, and 30 million hectares in Iran are affected by salinity and dust storms. Damaged soils are also driving more sand and dust storms, fed by areas like the 330,000 km² Taklamakan Desert and degraded rangelands in Mongolia.
From water scarcity to shrinking lakes and wetlands, and from groundwater depletion to gaps in integrated water management, including areas such as the Bakhtegan Basin, a combination of pressures is accelerating land degradation and desertification.
Growing technological demands, including data centres that use 560 billion litres of water each year, add more pressure. Climate change is worsening the situation, with hotter temperatures and shifting rainfall drying soils and increasing wind erosion across Central Asia, China and the Middle East.
UNDP works with countries across the region to protect soil, restore land, manage water better, build capacity to manage sand and dust storms and strengthen resilience.
Stabilizing Soil and Vegetation Cover in Afghanistan
Afghanistan is among the top 10 most climate-vulnerable countries, facing an alarming rise in sand and dust storms (SDS). In southern and western provinces: Herat, Farah, Nimroz, and Kandahar, experience over 50 SDS days annually, while northern plains such as Balkh and Jowzjan see 20–30 days. Over the past two decades, SDS frequency has increased by 15–20%, correlating with prolonged droughts and vegetation loss.
Average temperatures have risen by 1.8°C since 1950, and there is a projection of +6.4°C by 2100, alongside a 30% decline in precipitation in arid zones. Forest cover has dropped below 2%, and overgrazing affects 60% of rangelands, creating vast dust source zones.
But there are solutions. UNDP is working with communities in eastern Afghanistan to plant drought-tolerant trees and restore degraded land, measures which not only strengthen climate resilience but also help reduce the sources of sand and dust storms by stabilising soil and increasing vegetation cover. UNDP is also expanding solar power for hospitals, schools, water pumps, and small businesses, so communities have reliable electricity without relying on firewood or expensive fuel. At the community level, UNDP helps people prepare for natural disasters by training them in early warning, response, and risk reduction. Alongside this, UNDP works with local institutions to improve environmental data and planning. Furthermore, UNDP has supported for an integration of SDS risk into Afghanistan’s National Adaptation Plan and Climate Change Strategy. Regional cooperation under frameworks like UNCCD and SDS-WAS is critical to address transboundary dust flows.
Strengthening Early Warning for Dust and Sand Storms in Iran
Across parts of Iran, when the wind picks up, the sky can quickly turn from blue to brown. For people in provinces like Khuzestan, Ilam, Semnan, and Yazd, sand and dust storms (SDS) have become a familiar — and increasingly severe — part of daily life, affecting health, livelihoods, and the environment.
To respond, UNDP Iran, together with the Department of Environment and the National Secretariat for Policy Making and Coordination of Management for the Sand and Dust Storms Phenomenon, is helping strengthen national and local capacities to manage and adapt to this growing challenge. This partnership focuses on building institutional systems, technical skills, and community awareness to reduce risk and improve preparedness.
In Khuzestan and Ilam, local authorities and experts at various levels are identifying practical mitigation measures. More than 50,000 hectares have been surveyed, resulting in site-specific plans for land stabilization, including windbreaks, sediment traps, and vegetation planting. National forecasting and early warning capacities have also improved through upgraded computing equipment and monitoring instruments, while preparatory work in Semnan and Yazd is laying the foundation for new pilot sites.
Iran faces serious environmental, economic, and health challenges from SDS, with internal SDS hotspots and external sources affecting the country through transboundary SDS hotspots. Recognizing the shared nature of the threat, Iran has led UN resolutions, including the establishment of the UN Decade on Combating SDS (2025–2034), UNEA6 Combating Sand and Dust Storm (UNEP/EA.6/Res.7) and hosted several international and regional conferences with UN support — demonstrating its commitment to collective solutions.
Restoring Black Soils to Safeguard Food Security in China
In Northeast China, UNDP is working to protect one of the country’s most valuable agricultural resources – its black soils. Often called “the panda of arable land” for their rarity and high natural fertility, these soils are critical to national food security but are increasingly threatened by erosion, nutrient depletion, and unsustainable farming practices. Once degraded, black soils are difficult to restore. Eighty-five percent of China’s black soil areas are located in Northeast China, making the region one of the world’s most important black soil belts.
Through a pilot initiative in partnership with the China International Center for Economic and Technical Exchanges (CICETE), UNDP is supporting integrated water–soil protection in Heilongjiang Province, across two major plains.
Demonstration sites on the Sanjiang Plain, a major rice-producing region, have introduced water-saving irrigation, precision fertilization, drainage recycling, and IoT-based monitoring systems. Early results show significant improvements, including more than a 20% reduction in nitrogen and phosphorus pollution in rice areas and replenished water resources of up to 1.16 million m³ per 666.67 hectares.
On the Songnen Plain, an important maize and dryland crop area, UNDP-supported interventions have reduced runoff by 40–50% and soil erosion by 40–60%, while increasing soil organic matter by 3–5%. These measures have been complemented by technical training for over 1,000 farmers – at least 40% of them women – and the development of a digital platform to support sustainable water–soil management. The project has also established a comprehensive evaluation framework aligned with national black soil protection policies and SDG targets, offering a model that can be scaled to safeguard soil health, agricultural productivity, and ecological resilience across Northeast China.
Mongolia’s Effort to Heal Degraded Land
UNDP is supporting 120 herder groups in Mongolia to manage pastures sustainably through rotational grazing, reducing livestock pressure by 23.4% in project areas, restoring catchments by planting 328,000 trees, improving water access through 106 groundwater wells, and helping the country prepare for COP17 (2026) to champion global solutions for drylands.
Across the rangelands surrounding Elsentasarkhai, herders have also felt the transformation taking place. Many recall seasons when the soil hardened, grasses thinned, and grazing routes shifted as droughts intensified. In recent years, however, they have begun to notice subtle signs of recovery where the station’s restoration measures have taken root, young grasses returning after years of absence, livestock finding shelter behind newly established windbreaks, and sandy patches stabilizing enough for shrubs to reappear. For herding families whose lives are tied to the health of the land, these changes are more than environmental improvements; they represent renewed confidence that the steppe can heal when given the chance.
“When the grasses started returning, even in small patches, it felt like the land was breathing again,” says a herder from Bayankhongor Province. “If the pasture recovers, our families can recover too.”
The improvements may be modest, but they are meaningful, reinforcing local confidence that with the right support, Mongolia’s steppe can heal and sustain its communities for generations to come.
Act early in countries with low or emerging aridity
All these responses have some elements in common that guide UNDP’s action:
- Early action. Countries with emerging aridity need to act early by assessing soil and water risks, integrating aridity into national plans, and adopting sustainable land-use strategies before conditions worsen. UNDP also helps strengthen drought risk governance through better monitoring, early warning systems, and national drought plans linked to climate and biodiversity priorities.
- The power of nature-based solutions. Countries need to scale nature-based solutions by expanding a range of land restoration initiatives, agroforestry, wetland rehabilitation, and the use of native vegetation to protect soils from erosion and dust storms. Another priority is mobilising large-scale finance by unlocking climate, biodiversity, and land restoration funding, and supporting countries to use blended finance, green bonds, and carbon or biodiversity credits.
- Thinking beyond borders. Sand and dust storms don’t stop at borders, and our actions shouldn’t either. That’s why UNDP aims to promote regional cooperation by encouraging shared early warning systems for dust storms, harmonising land-management policies, and supporting cross-border wetland and rangeland restoration in areas such as Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. At the regional level, it is important to ensure technology supports water and soil security by promoting AI and digital tools for monitoring and forecasting, and guiding countries on regulating water-intensive technologies like data centres.
