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Desertification is a global phenomenon, affecting all continents, engendering cross-boundary and transcontinental migrations, and forcing people in vulnerable areas that have been] marginalized by poverty and ecological degradation, to look for better living opportunities in cities, other regions, or other countries, where further strains on the natural and social environments are apt to…

It is calculated that, during the past 50 years, the Sahara has engulfed some 650,000 square kilometres of arable land, vast areas of India have been overrun by the Thar Desert, and the Atacama has swallowed thousands of square kilometres of northern Chile. Similar disasters have befallen large parts of the Middle East, Argentina, southern Africa, and parts of Siberia and China. Of…

The United Nations Conference on Desertification (UNCOD), which was held in Nairobi, Kenya, during 29 August - 9 September 1977, a Plan of Action to Combat Desertification. It presents a set of recommendations for initiating and sustaining efforts on the scale required to halt further deterioration of productive lands that are prone to desertification. The draft plan, as submitted to…

Despite all that has been accomplished with an uncoordinated global programme, the exaggerated expectations following UNCOD have not come close to being realized. Land degradation continues widely, even though in places dunes are being stabilized, trees planted, and there is some success in reducing salinization of irrigated land. Too little effort is directed towards field control of…

A reassessment of the status and trends of desertification was called for as part of a general assessment of progress in the implementation of the United Nations Plan of Action to Combat Desertification, seven years after the UN Conference on Desertification (UNCOD) in 1977. Because of the inadequate data existing at the country or state level, the basic generalization has been set at a wider…

Before the great drought struck "The Sahel" in the late 1960's, few people outside of Africa had even heard that name. But then the crisis and vivid scenes of famine and deprivation made "The Sahel" practically synonymous with catastrophe. Consequently the General Assembly of the United Nations discussed the tradegy of the Sahelian people and region in 1974, and passed a resolution…