• من المتوقع أن يهجر نحو 60 مليون شخص المناطق المصابة بالتصحر في أفريقيا جنوب الصحراء الكبرى متجهين إلى شمـال القارة وأوروبا بين عامي 1997 و2020، لكن تدفق المهاجرين إلى أوروبا لا يبلغ حالياً سوى 000 450 شخص؛
The very survival of 1 billion people in over 100 countries, who depend on the land for most of their needs and tend to be among the poorest people on the planet, is at risk; Some 60 million people are expected to abandon the desert-stricken areas of sub-Saharan Africa for the north of the continent and Europe between 1997 and 2020, but at the moment the flow of migrants to Europe amounts to 450,000 people; Between 70,000 and 90,000 Mexicans leave their homes and farmlands every year in search of a better life as immigrants to the United States; today, total migration to the United States and Canada is only 600,000 people; A quarter of the land in Latin America and the Caribbean is desert or arid; Since the 1950s, sandstorms and increasing desertification in China have devastated approximately 700,000 hectares of cultivated land, 2.35 million hectares of grazing land, and 6.4 million hectares of forest, woodland and wooded areas; A fifth of the land in Spain is at risk of desertification; More than 30 per cent of the land in the United States is suffering from soil degradation.