mixed charts

The pie chart and the table reveal major factors degrading land on a global scale and the proportions of degraded land in 3 different regions.

Overall, it is clear from the pie chart that among 3 principal reasons for degraded land, over-grazing leads to the largest percentage of land degradation. From the table, it can be seen that Europe had a far higher proportion of unproductive land than the other two regions in the 1990s.

More specifically, 35% of land became degraded due to over-grazing. Similar proportions of land were degraded by over-cultivation and deforestation: 28% and 30% respectively. By comparison, other causes resulted in merely 7% of global land degradation.

In terms of land degradation by region, up to 10% of European land turned less productive as it was deforested compared to 0.2% in North America and approximately 2% in Oceania. This area also had by far the highest proportion of over cultivated land (nearly 8%), twofold higher than the figure for North America.

Although Oceania land was not influenced by this factor, it was far more degraded by over-grazing than any other area, with more than 11% of land becoming unproductive because of this problem.

Totally, while degraded land percentages in Europe were just under 25%, the figure for North America was reported to be merely 5%.