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Valentines Day often conjures up images of chocolates and romance. But the crop behind this indulgence faces an existential threat. Regions like northeastern Brazil, one of the worlds notable cocoa-producing areas, are grappling with increasing aridity a slow, yet unrelenting drying of the land. Cocoa is made from the beans of the cacao tree, which thrives in humid climates. The crop is struggling in these drying regions, and so are the farmers who grow it. This is not just Brazils story. Across West Africa, where 70% of the worlds cacao is grown, and in the Americas and Southeast Asia, shifting moisture levels threaten the delicate balance required for production. These regions, home to vibrant ecosystems and global breadbaskets that feed the world, are on the frontlines of ariditys slow but relentless advance. A farmer in Colombia holds a cacao pod. [Photo: 2017CIAT/NeilPalmer, CC BY-NC-SA] Over the past 30 years, more than three-quarters of the Earths landmass has become drier. A recent report I helped coordinate for the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification found that drylands now cover 41% of global land, an area that expanded by nearly 1.7 million square miles (4.3 million square kilometers) over those three decades about half the size of Australia. This creeping dryness is not just a climate phenomenon. Its a long-term transformation that may be irreversible and that carries devastating consequences for ecosystems, agriculture and livelihoods worldwide. What causes aridity? Aridity, while often thought of as purely a climate phenomenon, is the result of a complex interplay among human-driven factors. These include greenhouse gas emissions, land use practices and the degradation of critical natural resources, such as soil and biodiversity. These interconnected forces have been accelerating the transformation of once-productive landscapes into increasingly arid regions, with consequences that ripple across ecosystems and economies. Greenhouse gas emissions: A global catalyst Human-induced climate change is the primary driver of rising aridity. Greenhouse gas emissions, particularly from fossil fuel combustion and deforestation, increase global temperatures. Rising temperatures, in turn, cause moisture to evaporate at a faster rate. This heightened evaporation reduces soil and plant moisture, exacerbating water scarcity even in regions with moderate rainfall. Aridity began accelerating globally in the 1950s, and the world has seen a pronounced shift over the past three decades. This process is particularly stark in regions already prone to dryness, such as Africas Sahel region and the Mediterranean. In these areas, reduced precipitation combined with increased evaporation creates a feedback loop: Drier soils absorb less heat, leaving the atmosphere warmer and intensifying arid conditions. The number of people living in dryland regions has been rising in each region in recent years. Years 1971-2020. Scales vary. [Graph: UNCCD] Unsustainable land-use practices: A hidden accelerator Aridity is also affected by how people use and manage land. Unsustainable agricultural practices, overgrazing and deforestation strip soils of their protective vegetation cover, leaving them vulnerable to erosion. Industrial farming techniques often prioritize short-term yields over long-term sustainability, depleting nutrients and organic matter essential for healthy soils. For example, in cocoa-producing regions like northeastern Brazil, deforestation to make room for agriculture disrupts local water cycles and exposes soils to degradation. Without vegetation to anchor it, topsoil critical for plant growth washes away during rainfall or is blown away by winds, taking with it vital nutrients. These changes create a vicious cycle: Degraded soils also hold less water and lead to more runoff, reducing the lands ability to recover. Aridity can affect the ability to grow many crops. Large parts of the country of Chad, shown here, have drying lands. [Photo: United Nations Chad, CC BY-NC-SA] The soil-biodiversity connection Soil, often overlooked in discussions of climate resilience, plays a critical role in mitigating aridity. Healthy soils act as reservoirs, storing water and nutrients that plants depend on. They also support biodiversity below and above ground. A single teaspoon of soil contains billions of microorganisms that help cycle nutrients and maintain ecological balance. However, as soils degrade under aridity and mismanagement, this biodiversity diminishes. Microbial communities, essential for nutrient cycling and plant health, decline. When soils become compacted and lose organic matter, the lands ability to retain water diminishes, making it even more susceptible to drying out. In short, the loss of soil health creates cascading effects that undermine ecosystems, agricultural productivity and food security. Global hot spots: Looming food security crises Cocoa is just one crop affected by the encroachment of rising aridity. Other key agricultural zones, including the breadbaskets of the world, are also at risk. In the Mediterranean, Africas Sahel and parts of the U.S. West, aridity already undermines farming and biodiversity. By 2100, up to 5 billion people could live in drylands nearly double the current population in these areas, due to both population growth and expansion of drylands as the planet warms. This puts immense pressure on food systems. It can also accelerate migration as declining agricultural productivity, water scarcity and worsening living conditions force rural populations to move in search of opportunities. A map shows average aridity for 1981-2010. Computer simulations estimate that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities caused a 1.2% larger increase in the four types of dry regions combined for the periods between 1850 and 19812010 than simulations with only solar and volcanic effects considered. [Graph: UNCCD] Ariditys ripple effects also extend far beyond agriculture. Ecosystems, already strained by deforestation and pollution, are stressed as water resources dwindle. Wildlife migrates or dies, and plant species adapted to moister conditions cant survive. The Sahels delicate grasslands, for instance, are rapidly giving way to desert shrubs. On a global scale, economic losses linked to aridification are staggering. In Africa, rising aridity contributed to a 12% drop in gross domestic product from 1990 to 2015. Sandstorms and dust storms, wildfires and water scarcity further burden governments, exacerbating poverty and health crises in the most affected regions. The path forward Aridity is not inevitable, nor are its effects completely irreversible. But coordinated global efforts are essential to curb its progression. Countries can work together to restore degraded lands by protecting and restoring ecosystems, improving soil health and encouraging sustainable farming methods. Communities can manage water more efficiently through rainwater harvesting and advanced irrigation systems that optimize water use. Governments can reduce the drivers of climate change by investing in renewable energy. Continued international collaboration, including working with businesses, can help share technologies to make these actions more effective and available worldwide. So, as you savor chocolate this Valentines Day, remember the fragile ecosystems behind it. The price of cocoa in early 2025 was near its all-time high, due in part to dry conditions in Africa. Without urgent action to address aridity, this scenario may become more common, and cocoa and the sweet concoctions derived from it may well become a rare luxury. Collective action against aridity isnt just about saving chocolate its about preserving the planets capacity to sustain life. Narcisa Pricope is a professor of geography and land systems science and associate vice president for research at Mississippi State University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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The Senate on Thursday confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as President Donald Trumps health secretary, putting the prominent vaccine skeptic in control of $1.7 trillion in federal spending, vaccine recommendations and food safety as well as health insurance programs for roughly half the country. Republicans fell in line behind Trump despite hesitancy over Kennedy’s views on vaccines, voting 52-48 to elevate the scion of one of Americas most storied political and Democratic families to secretary of the Health and Human Services Department. Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, who had polio as a child, was the only no vote among Republicans, mirroring his stands against Trump’s picks for the Pentagon chief and director of national intelligence. All Democrats opposed Kennedy. The GOP has largely embraced Kennedys vision to Make America Healthy Again by directing the public health agencies to focus on chronic diseases such as obesity. Kennedy, 71, whose name and family tragedies have put him in the national spotlight since he was a child, has earned a formidable following with his populist and sometimes extreme views on food, chemicals and vaccines. His audience only grew during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Kennedy devoted much of his time to a nonprofit that sued vaccine makers and harnessed social media campaigns to erode trust in vaccines as well as the government agencies that promote them. With Trump’s backing, Kennedy insisted he was uniquely positioned to revive trust in those public health agencies, which include the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes for Health. Last week, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he hoped Kennedy goes wild in reining in health care costs and improving Americans’ health. But before agreeing to support Kennedy, potential holdout Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., a doctor who leads the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, required assurances that Kennedy would not make changes to existing vaccine recommendations. During Senate hearings, Democrats tried to prod Kennedy to deny a long-discredited theory that vaccines cause autism. Some lawmakers also raised alarms about Kennedy financially benefiting from changing vaccine guidelines or weakening federal lawsuit protections against vaccine makers. Kennedy made more than $850,000 last year from an arrangement referring clients to a law firm that has sued the makers of Gardasil, a human papillomavirus vaccine that protects against cervical cancer. If confirmed as health secretary, he promised to reroute fees collected from the arrangement to his son. Kennedy will take over the agency in the midst of a massive federal government shakeup, led by billionaire Elon Musk, that has shut off even if temporarily billions of taxpayer dollars in public health funding and left thousands of federal workers unsure about their jobs. On Friday, the NIH announced it would cap billions of dollars in medical research given to universities and cancer being used to develop treatments for diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s. Kennedy, too, has called for a staffing overhaul at the NIH, FDA and CDC. Last year, he promised to fire 600 employees at the NIH, the nation’s largest funder of biomedical research. Amanda Seitz, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
I recently helped my mom sort through boxes she inherited when my grandparents passed away. One box was labeled either ironically or genuinely toothpick holders and other treasures. Inside were many keepsakes from moments now lost to history although we found no toothpick holders. My favorite of the items we sorted through was a solitary puzzle piece, an artifact reflecting my late grandmothers penchant for hiding the final piece to a jigsaw puzzle just to swoop in at the last moment and finish it. After several hours of reminiscing, my mom and I threw away 90% of what we had sorted. Why did I keep this? is a question I hear frequently, both from my family and friends and from patients. I am a licensed clinical psychologist whose research focuses on the characterization, assessment and treatment of hoarding disorder, particularly for adults 60 years of age or older. As such, I spend a great deal of my time thinking about this question. What drives the need to keep stuff? Hoarding disorder is a psychiatric condition defined by urges to save items and difficulty discarding current possessions. For adults with clinically severe hoarding disorder, this leads to a level of household clutter that impairs daily functioning and can even create a fire hazard. In my professional experience, however, many adults struggle with clutter even if they do not meet the clinical criteria for hoarding disorder. Holding on to things that have sentimental value or could be useful in the future is a natural part of growing older. For some people, though, this tendency to hold on to objects grows over time, to the point that they eventually do meet criteria for hoarding disorder. Age-related changes in executive function may help explain the increase in prevalence of hoarding disorder as we get older; increasing difficulty with decision-making in general also affects decisions around household clutter. The traditional model behind hoarding disorder suggests that difficulty with discarding comes from distress during decision-making. However, my research shows that this may be less true of older adults. When I was a graduate student, I conducted a study in which we asked adults with hoarding disorder to spend 15 minutes making decisions about whether to keep or discard various items brought from their home. Participants could sort whatever items they wanted. Most chose to sort paper items such as old mail, cards or notes. We found that age was associated with lower levels of distress during the task, such that participants who were older tended to feel less stressed when making the decision about what to keep and what to discard. We also found that many participants, particularly those who were older, actually reported positive emotions while sorting their items. In new research publishing soon, my current team replicated this finding using a home-based version of the task. This suggests that fear of making the wrong decision isnt a universal driver of our urge to save items. In fact, a study my team published in August 2024 with adults over 50 with hoarding disorder suggests that altruism, a personality trait of wanting to help others, may explain why some people keep items that others might discard. My colleagues and I compared our participants personality profiles with that of adults in the general population of the same gender and age group. Compared with the general population, participants with hoarding disorder scored almost universally high on altruism. Altruism also comes up frequently in my clinical work with older adults who struggle with clutter. People in our studies often tell me that they have held onto something out of a sense of responsibility, either for the item itself or to the environment. I need it to go to a good home and my grandmother gave this to me are sentiments we commonly hear. Thus, people may keep things not out of fear of losing them but because saving them is consistent with their values. Leaning into values In a 2024 study, my team demonstrated that taking a values-based approach to decluttering helps older adults to decrease household clutter and increases their positive affect, a state of mind characterized by feelings such as joy and contentment. Clinicians visited the homes of older adults with hoarding disorder for one hour per week for six weeks. At each visit, the clinicians used a technique called motivational interviewing to help participants talk through their decisions while they sorted household clutter. We found that having participants start with identifying their values allowed them to maintain focus on their long-term goals. Too often, people focus on the immediate ability of an object to spark joy and forget to consider whether an object has greater meaning and purpose. Values are the abstract beliefs that we humans use to create our goals. Values are whatever drives us and can include family, faith or frivolity. Because values are subjective, what people identify as important to keep is also subjective. For example, the dress I wore to my sisters wedding reminded me of a wonderful day. However, when it no longer fit I gave it away because doing so was more consistent with my values of utility and helpfulness: I wanted the dress to go to someone who needed it and would use it. Someone who more strongly valued family and beauty might have prioritized keeping the dress because of the aesthetics and its link to a family event. Additionally, we found that instead of challenging the reasons a person might have for keeping an item, it is helpful to instead focus on eliciting their reasons for discarding it and the goals they have for their home and their life. Tips for sweeping away the old My research on using motivational interviewing for decluttering and my observations from a current clinical trial on the approach point to some practical steps people can take to declutter their home. Although my work has been primarily with older adults, these tips should be helpful for people of all ages. Start with writing out your values. Every object in your home should feel value-consistent for you. For example, if tradition and faith are important values for you, you might be more inclined to hold onto a cookbook that was made by the elders at your church and more able to let go of a cookbook you picked up on a whim at a bookstore.
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