The soil of the earth is bad.
For the second time, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has published a "Global Land Outlook" - the largest compilation of information ever compiled on the subject.
Seventy percent of the vast land area is no longer in its natural state, forty percent is even badly damaged, which is reflected in declining productivity and weaker ecosystem services.
The significance of these numbers is immense: According to the UNCCD, half of the global gross domestic product now depends directly on the condition of the soil.
Three scenarios presented in the report show that the coming years offer a lot of room for maneuver - up and down.
A "business as usual" variant assumes continuing trends in the spread and implementation of intensive agriculture.
The consequences would be a 12 to 14 percent reduction in agricultural productivity by 2050, additional soil damage the size of South America and additional carbon emissions of 69 gigatons, which would increase the concentration in the atmosphere by as much as an eighth.
Rural areas, indigenous peoples and women are particularly hard hit by the consequences.
"We need to stop taking healthy soils for granted," said Ibrahim Thiaw, Executive Secretary of the UNCCD.
He pleads for large-scale restoration,
Biodiversity loss is inevitable
Two other scenarios show the potential effects of Thiaw's proposal.
If the soil quality is improved in a targeted manner over an area of 50 million square kilometers - which corresponds to about one third of the world's land area - agricultural productivity could increase by up to 10 percent, especially in many developing countries, and an additional 17 gigatonnes of carbon could be bound.
If another four million square kilometers are placed under protection, which are of particular importance for water regulation and other ecosystem services, the projected biodiversity loss in particular will continue to decrease.
About thirty percent fewer species are likely to be lost to land-use change compared to the “business as usual” alternative.
"The fact that living beings continue to die out even with these highly ambitious scenarios shows the situation we are in and how urgent action must be taken," says Adrian Newton, an ecologist at the University of Bornemouth.
Like many of his colleagues, Newton points out that ecosystem restoration also makes sense from an economic point of view.
The UNCCD report cites studies that expect between $7 and $30 in long-term benefits for every $1 invested in forest restoration.
Furthermore, millions of new jobs would be created.
There have already been successes: The "Global Land Outlook" describes hundreds of case studies from all over the world in which ecosystems of all kinds have been renatured with measurable effects.
Sometimes it's about improved urban planning and green roofs in the big city,