The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has released the first major global assessment of salt-affected soils in 50 years.

The climate crisis and human mismanagement are contributing to excessive salinisation, which affects more than 10 percent of the total global land area.

The report stated that today, 10 countries (Afghanistan, Australia, Argentina, China, Kazakhstan, Russia, the United States, Iran, Sudan, and Uzbekistan) account for 70 percent of the world’s salt-affected soils.

The report shows that nearly 1.4 billion hectares of land (just over 10 percent of the total global land area) are already impacted by salinity, with an additional one billion hectares at risk due to the climate crisis and human mismanagement.

In the countries most affected by this issue, salinity stress can lead to crops yield losses-such as rice or beans-of up to 70 percent.

It further estimates that 10 percent of irrigated cropland and 10 percent of rainfed cropland are affected by salinity, although uncertainty remains high due to limited data availability. Models of global aridity trends indicate that, under the existing trend of temperature increase, the affected area may increase to between 24 and 32 percent of the total land surface.

Rising sea levels are projected to place more than one billion people in coastal zones at risk of progressive flooding and salinisation by the end of the century. Additionallly, global warming is contributing to salinisation through the thawing of permafrost.

The report noted that global freshwater use, in particular, has increased sixfold during the last century, contributing to groundwater salinisation due to the overexploitation of aquifers for irrigation purposes.