Measured by the land area that can support human habitation, the earth is shrinking. Pressures from mounting population densities, once generated

solely by the addition of over 70 million people per year, are now further impacted by the advance of deserts and the rise in sea level.

Expanding deserts are a human creation stemming primarily from overstocking grasslands and overplowing land…

China now loses nearly 1,400 square miles to desert annually and over the last 50 years 24,000 villages were abandoned or partly depopulated as they

were overrun by drifting sand.

Kazakhstan has abandoned nearly half of its cropland since 1980 and all countries in central Asia are losing land to desertification.

In Iran sand storms buried 124 villages in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan in 2002.

Algeria is geographically restructuring its agriculture, replacing grain in the south with orchards and vineyards.

Nigeria is losing 1,355 square miles of rangeland and cropland to desertification each year.

In Mexico the degradation of cropland now forces some 700,000 Mexicans off the land each year.

Click here for The Earth is Shrinking, Part 2.