This bar graph illustrates three main reasons for land degradation in four continents including Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe.
Overall, Africa and Asia undergo the most severe land damage while Europe is the least spoiled region. It is also important to note that overgrazing is the main driver for the damage in most continents except for Asia.
Looking at the figure for Africa and Asia, it can be deduced that while overgrazing causes most of the land degradation in the latter, with 500 million hectares of land being sabotaged by this, the driver behind this phenomenon in the former is deforestation, with approximately 450 hectares. However, the same reason only damages about 370 million hectares of African land, which is nearly equal to the area of land damaged by overgrazing in Asia, at close to 380 million hectares. Agricultural purpose is responsible for 300 and approximately 420 million hectares of waste land in Africa and Asia respectively.
Upon closer inspection at the less damaged regions, it is notable that both continents exhibit the same rankings of contributing factors with the leading driver being overgrazing, which results in about 210 and 110 million hectares of land being affected in Europe and Australia respectively. Meanwhile, the corresponding number is recorded to be around 100 to 105 million hectares regarding land area spoiled by tree-cutting activities. Lastly, farming is shown to have minimal impact, contributing to only approximately 50 and 80 million hectares in Europe and Australia respectively.