A new report from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has argued that humanity is “at a crossroads” when it comes to managing the increasingly high number of droughts and the severity of their impacts worldwide. The experts found that, since 2000, the number and duration of droughts has increased by 29 percent, and took the largest human toll among all natural disasters. If mitigation actions are not done “urgently, using every tool we have,” droughts may end up affecting over three-quarters of the world’s population by 2050.