The Drylands Dividend: The Smart Investment for Powering a Water-Scarce World

Drylands landscape near Kitui, Kitui County - Kenya. Credit: Axel Fassio/CIFOROpinion by Éliane Ubalijoro (nairobi, kenya)Tuesday, September 01, 2026Inter Press Service NAIROBI, Kenya, September 1 (IPS) - Open a can of something fizzy and the reason the sugar doesn’t separate immediately is gum arabic, tapped by hand from acacia trees across the Sahel. Spray on perfume and the reason the scent is still there at dinner is frankincense, a resin cut from Boswellia trees on the dry escarpments of the Horn of Africa. The fat that gives a chocolate bar its snap may well be shea, gathered and pressed by women in the parkland belt of West Africa. The cashmere jumper came from goats that can only be raised on cold, dry rangelands. These are drylands. They cover 44 per cent of the planet’s land, hold 44 per cent of the world’s cropland and half its livestock, and two billion people live in them. We have spent decades describing them as empty or unproductive. For a long list of things most of us use without thinking, they are the only places on earth that produce them at all.It is no secret that our world is becoming hotter and drier. Three quarters of the planet’s land experienced drier cond...