Earlier this week, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted a resolution which declared 2025 to 2034 as the United Nations Decade on Combating Sand and Dust Storms. The resolution comes amid growing recognition of the intensification of sand and dust storms, from central Africa to northern China.
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Friday 12 July also marks the inaugural International Day of Combating Sand and Dust Storms since the General Assembly declared it a year ago. The UN body has urged countries to observe the day by raising public awareness of the importance of combating sand and dust storms (SDS), given the threat they pose to public health, food security and livelihoods.
According to a compendium report published by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), global annual dust emissions have increased by about 200 teragrams (Tg) over the past century.
More than half (56 per cent) of this increase was attributed to climate change, and 40 per cent to anthropogenic land cover changes. Natural cycle variability accounted for only 4 per cent of this change.
While SDS may not pose a direct threat to national or regional security, they can undermine health, food security, infrastructure integrity, and reduce access to potable water, noted Scott Hauger, independent researcher and retired professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in the United States.
However, SDS remains a low-profile hazard with under-recognised disaster impacts, due to a lack of regular reporting and limited quantification of their economic impacts.
Compared to other natural hazards such as earthquakes and floods with highly visible aftermaths, SDS events rarely result in large-scale physical damage or a high number of immediate fatalities. Instead, their impacts are often hidden in health statistics for respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, or economic losses associated with declining productivity.
To date, attempts to quantify the economic costs of SDS have been scarce, though the Asian and Pacific Centre for the Development of Disaster Information Management (APDIM) has highlighted the Ever Given Suez Canal incident in March 2021 as an example of the impact that SDS can have on transportation and global trade.
Attributed to strong winds and a sandstorm that reduced visibility, the incident cost US$14 million to US$15 million in lost revenue for each day of the blockage, which choked up the shortest shipping route between Europe and Asia.
Why sands and dust storms are concerning for Asia
Asia Pacific is both a significant source of mineral dust emissions and a highly impacted region.
With four main sand and dust storm corridors, the region is the world’s second-largest source of mineral dust emissions. Concurrently, countries across Central Asia, northern China, and Southeast Asia experience high atmospheric concentrations of dust.
For instance, 100 per cent of Turkmenistan’s population is exposed to medium and high levels of poor air quality due to sand and dust storms, though India is the most impacted nation in terms of absolute numbers.
India has the largest population in terms of numbers of people exposed to medium and high levels of poor air quality, but Turkmenistan, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan have the highest proportions of people exposed to bad air. Image: APDIM
Airborne sand and dust particles can impact health – particles smaller than 10 microns in diameter (PM10) penetrate the lungs, while those smaller than 2.5 microns (PM2.5) go further into deep lung tissue, increasing the risks of heart disease, asthma, and low birth weight.
This exacerbates the health risks of air pollution, which is now the second leading global risk factor for premature death, according to a June report published in partnership by the UN Children’s Fund.
Additionally, SDS poses a serious problem for solar power plants by reducing the solar radiation intensity reaching the photovoltaic modules, which in turn lowers their productivity.
Presently, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan suffer from large levels of energy loss due to SDS. These countries also face the largest electricity access deficit in Asia Pacific, noted a report by APDIM.
Transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy is crucial for achieving net zero, but these storm events leave the viability of substituting renewable energy for fossil fuels even more uncertain.
Storms and climate change
Some 330 million people worldwide are impacted by SDS, though the tally is poised to rise as climate change amplifies the factors contributing to storms, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
While sand and dust storms are a natural part of the Earth’s biochemical cycles, they are also driven by human activities such as unsustainable land management and anthropogenic climate change. Desertification, increasing water stress, and more extreme droughts are expected to create more favourable conditions for sand and dust storms in the coming decades.
Sand and dust storms can also worsen existing climate patterns. In Pakistan, for instance, dust has significantly changed the country’s rainfall patterns and increased the likelihood of extreme rainfall. Additionally, dust deposition on glacier ice darkens the surface, reducing its reflectivity towards solar radiation and intensifying warming effects.
Other global trends, such as population growth and urbanisation also increase the potential for SDS to impact human security factors such as health and food security, Hauger highlighted.
However, not all experts agree that climate change will worsen the impacts of SDS.
A recent study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that Arctic amplification – where the Arctic region warms at a faster rate than the rest of the planet – has reduced the thermal contrast between the pole and the northern hemisphere, leading to a decline in dust levels in West and South Asia over the past two decades.
More pertinently, the study’s model projections suggest a possible increase in dust loads in these regions under a global “sustainability” scenario, where anthropogenic radiative forcing – the warming influences of anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHG) – is expected to decrease over time as nations move towards net zero emissions.
The authors have therefore argued that “in addition to controlling GHG emissions, more local efforts need to be devoted to countering desertification in West and South Asia to reduce potential natural dust emissions”.
While dust storm events have not currently exceeded the capabilities of nations to manage their human security impacts, these challenges can potentially threaten national security if they exceed a nation’s capacity to respond, said Hauger.
