All publications and documents

This volume contains the proceedings of the workshops held in the framework of the EU “MEDRAP Concerted Action to Support the Elaboration of the Sub-Regional Action Programme to Combat Desertification in the Northern Mediterranean”. During the project, which ran from 2001 until 2003, five workshops were held on: - Sustainable Use of Soil and Water Resources; - Identification of…

The book aims at defining, explaining and offering suggestions on land degradation in agricultural and forest areas worldwide. It presented the American experience of desertification in the 1930s and the consequent land management reform undertaken by the government. Noting that 24 billion tons of topsoil are lost every year due to desertification, the book presents lessons learned in early…

Dust and sandstorm (DSS) is a transboundary environmental phenomenon with severe socioeconomic impacts and public health consequences on hundreds millions of people in Northeast Asia. To address this concern, a regional cooperation mechanism has been established through a regional technical assistance project of ADB for Prevention and Control of Dust and Sandstorms in Northeast Asia (RETA 6068)…

In West Africa, desertification threatens the living conditions of over 250 million people. The results of projects to combat desertification undertaken over the last 40 years or so have been mixed. One reason for this is probably that technical or technological approaches have taken precedence over the sociological approach. This manual is intended to bring the reader back to the social…

The 16 papers in this volume grew out of questions posed by policymakers and 26 scientific papers and 44 posters presented at that 1999 workshop and were developed through an ongoing, multidesciplinary discussion initiated at that time. This multidisciplinary collaboration has aimed to bridge the gap within science. Landscape-level services arising from maintaining or increasing…

This discussion paper is about the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) - one of the multilateral agreements that came out of the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. UNCCD is based on a conceptualization of international relations that transcends to a large extent the traditional notions of inter-governmental treaties. …