All publications and documents

The world has a unique opportunity to use global markets for the benefit of all nations and all people. The 2002 Report looks at the workings of these global markets - at how they meet, or fail to meet, the needs of the world's poorest people. The outcome of this task highlights a serious problem: the richest 20% of the population now receives 150 times the income of the poorest 20%. While…

The Atlas includes information and many maps derived from the Global Assessment of Human-Induced Soil Degradation (GLASOD), as conducted in 1990 by the International Soil Reference and Information Centre (ISRIC) at Wageningen, The Netherlands, on behalf of UNEP. Aside from GLASOD's data on soil degradation, and in order to capture the multi-dimensional nature of global desertification processes,…

Desertification control bulletin is an international bulletin published in six monthly intervals by UNEP to disseminate information and knowledge on desertification problems and to present news on the programmes, activities and achievements in the implementation of the Plan of Action to Combat Desertification around the world. ( The bulletin is ceased in 2000. UNCCD library collection has most of…

This book focuses on the socio-economic aspects of desert communities such as balancing economic and ecological issues, new and renewable energy strategies and nonconventional energy plans. Systems approaches, applications and case studies in developing nations are discussed. Desert development /Part one: Desert agriculture, ecology and biology Part two: Socio-economic aspects and…

In Mauritania, intense wind erosion threatens productive land and infrastructure and causes severe levels of land degradation. Rural poverty encourages migration to urban centres. In an attempt to alleviate these problems, a project was established which focused on sand encroachment control and the empowerment of communities to initiate and manage land protection and economic …

From its origin as a major development and environment issue following the Sahelian drought and famine in the early 1970s, desertification become a topic of great interest for the United Nations, governments of developing countries, and research scientists. Recent reviews of the desertification phenomenon, however, call into question the “conventional wisdom” regarding the extent of this…