All publications and documents

A preliminary framework for evaluating the effectiveness of international environmental agreements (IEAs) is described, and applied to the UN Plan of Action to Combat Desertification (PACD) and UN Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD), both of which have proven ineffective. There is good correspondence between the framework's nine criteria and official explanations of the reasons for poor…

This study aims to document various community efforts in land rehabilitation and assess their potential. Data were captured using interviews and focus group with 150 community members. A public participation index was used to establish the extent of community efforts in land rehabilitation. The study revealed that in the absence of proper management and dune stabilisation, large areas covered…

Environmental change and carbon are intrinsically linked. When contained in greenhouse gases, carbon is a part of the problem. But in its organic form in the soil, carbon represents a major part of the solution. The first metre of soil contains more than twice the amount of carbon than the amount in the atmosphere, and about three times the amount that resides in the world’s vegetation.  …

Based on soil characteristics, watertable level, mineral composition of plant biomass, morphological/reproductive traits and carbon discrimination values, a new concept for the classification of halophytes was developed. Six main groups of halophytes have been described within the desert flora of Central Asia. Significant changes on chemical contents of ions: Cl−, SOmath image, HCOmath image, Na+…

High concentration of salts in the rootzone soil limits the productivity of nearly 953 million ha of productive land in the world. Australia, followed by Asia, has the largest area under salinity and sodicity. Most of the salt-affected soils and brackish ground water resources are confined to arid and semiarid regions and are the causative factors for triggering the process of desertification…

The UN decision to couple ‘deserts’ and ‘desertification’ in addressing the year 2006 (as well as the following decade) as ‘Year (or Decade) of Deserts and Desertification’ sends several wrong messages regarding both the nature of deserts as natural ecosystems and of desertification as a human-driven process that reduces the provision of ecosystem services of soil conservation and of biological…