A better life outback
Wednesday, April 19, 2017 - 09:02
in Earth & Climate
Desert lands cover about a quarter of the Earth's land mass and are home to some half a billion people and yet they are commonly portrayed as extreme places with marginalized communities. The people who live there are perceived as living in hardship and isolation and surviving largely due to subsidies from the "mainstream" economy. New research published in the International Journal of Sustainable Development suggests that for some desert regions, particularly Australia's "outback", there is huge potential given appropriate infrastructure and investment for desert regions to become places of great prosperity and wellbeing.