{"id":59576,"date":"2025-07-12T12:37:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-12T12:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/59576\/"},"modified":"2025-07-12T12:37:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T12:37:10","slug":"sand-dust-storms-affect-about-330-million-people-due-to-climate-change-un-agriculture-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/59576\/","title":{"rendered":"Sand, dust storms affect about 330 million people due to climate change: UN | Agriculture News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nearly half the global population has also been exposed to dust levels exceeding WHO safety thresholds.<\/p>\n

A new report by the United Nations\u2019 World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has found that sand and dust storms are leading to \u201cpremature deaths\u201d due to climate change, with more than 330 million people in 150 countries affected.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) marked the International Day of Combating Sand and Dust Storms and its designation of 2025 \u2013 2034 as the UN Decade on Combating Sand and Dust Storms.<\/p>\n

The storms \u201care fast becoming one of the most overlooked yet far-reaching global challenges of our time\u201d, said Assembly President Philemon Yang. \u201cThey are driven by climate change, land degradation and unsustainable practices.\u201d<\/p>\n

The secretary-general of WMO, Celeste Saulo, said on Thursday that sand and dust storms do not just mean \u201cdirty windows and hazy skies. They harm the health and quality of life of millions of people and cost many millions of dollars through disruption to air and ground transport, on agriculture and on solar energy production.\u201d<\/p>\n

Airborne particles from these storms contribute to 7 million premature deaths annually, said Yang, adding that they trigger respiratory and cardiovascular disease, and reduce crop yields by up to 25%, causing hunger and migration.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout 2 billion tonnes of dust are emitted yearly, equivalent to 300 Great Pyramids of Giza\u201d in Egypt, Laura Paterson, the WMO\u2019s UN representative, told the UNGA.<\/p>\n

More than 80% of the world\u2019s dust comes from the deserts in North Africa and the Middle East, added Paterson, but it has a global effect because the particles can travel hundreds and even thousands of kilometres across continents and oceans.<\/p>\n

\"RockRock formations stand in the Sahara Desert outside the city centre of Djanet, a southeastern Algerian oasis town, on July 5, 2025 [Audrey Thibert\/AP]<\/p>\n

Undersecretary-General Rola Dashti, head of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, told the assembly the storms\u2019 economic costs are \u201cstaggering\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the Middle East and North Africa, it costs $150bn, roughly 2.5% of gross domestic product (GDP), annually to deal with dust and sand storms, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis spring alone, the Arab region experienced acute disruption,\u201d Dashti said, citing severe storms in Iraq that overwhelmed hospitals with respiratory cases and storms in Kuwait and Iran that forced school and office closures.<\/p>\n

Dust from the Sahara Desert in Africa has travelled as far as the Caribbean and Florida, she said. For the United States, dust and wind erosion caused $154bn in damage in 2017, a quadrupling of the amount since 1995, according to a study in the scientific journal Nature.<\/p>\n

The WMO and World Health Organization also warned that the health burden is rising sharply, with 3.8 billion people \u2013 nearly half the global population \u2013 exposed to dust levels exceeding WHO safety thresholds between 2018 and 2022, up from 2.9 billion people affected between 2003 and 2007.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly half the global population has also been exposed to dust levels exceeding WHO safety thresholds. A new…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":59577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[7779,2906,438,33025,746,210,3097,50,159,1206,67,132,68,26413],"class_list":{"0":"post-59576","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-africa","9":"tag-agriculture","10":"tag-business-and-economy","11":"tag-climate-crisis","12":"tag-environment","13":"tag-health","14":"tag-middle-east","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-science","17":"tag-united-nations","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-world-health-organization"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114840302396827349","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}