All publications and documents

Seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in September 2015 aim to end hunger and poverty, to protect the planet, and to ensure peace and prosperity for all. The soil organic carbon (SOC) stock is a major planetary resource supporting many critically important ecosystem services (ESs), and underpins realization of some of the SDGs at the national level. Thus, decrease…

The recent drought in the Sahel savanna is by no means abnormal: it is part of a general drying-up process that took place mainly between 7000 and 3500 years BP. Subsequent impoverishment of the flora and fauna has been due almost entirely to human activities - bad agriculture, felling trees for fuel and overgrazing by domestic stock. Various solutions have been proposed to the…

It is now 15 years since the scale of the problem of desertification in drylands was brought to world attention. The problem has continued to intensify and, according to regional and local sources, the extent of the land areas and numbers of people affected are still increas- ing. It is difficult to confirm this point from United Nations sources for the results of the surveys of 1977, 1984 and…

In 1987 UNEP stated that 27 million hectares of productive land were being desertification each year, at which rate not one hectare of productive land remain on earth in 200 years time. Despite being widely perceived as environmental issue of major importance, desertification has been subject considerable confusion, misinterpretation and lack of clarity regarding its teristics and…