Spring is a season that turns our world green, but olives trees in the hills of Andalusia in southern Spain have never been so pale. For local farmers it is yet another difficult year.

South Africa is experiencing its severest drought in more than a century. Savannahs – grasslands scattered with trees and scrubs, which cover about half of Africa – are some of the most productive environments of the continent, supporting livestock and rural livelihoods.

News of increased desertification has made headlines. Yet this process is not well understood.

The results of climate change are going to have more impact in Africa than other regions due both to ecological and socio-economic factors. However, little is known about the role of Africa with regard to greenhouse gases emissions.

Many African regions are prone to droughts. Advances in forecasting and early warning for these phenomena are now becoming available to help mitigate their consequences on vulnerable societies.

The EU’s driest region is Murcia in Spain. But it is also an area of intensive agriculture for such arid land.

Drought, low precipitation and global warming are all problems threatening Mediterranean regions, but other causes, such as intensive agricultural use, might affect desertification.

If it’s true that humanity is “living off its ecological credit card and can only do so by liquidating the planet’s natural resources”, as Mathis Wackernagel, director of Global Footprint Network, puts it, then this credit is ostensibly drying out.

Faced with the desertification that threatens Mediterranean Europe, researchers with Desertlink, a European Commission funded project, are trying to curb risk zones by studying certain exacerbating factors.

These last years, insect or rodent borne human diseases have been reappearing in Europe. These diseases have serious health, ecological and political consequences. The reasons behind these outbreaks are only partially known.

Freshwater ecosystems, already under stress from land-use change and pollution, now face additional pressures from climate change, directly and through interaction with other drivers.