The international community pressed for a treaty to tackle the growing physical and human crisis of desertification at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The Convention to Combat Desertification, the first legally binding international agreement on the problem, was agreed on in 1994. It promotes a bottom-up approach that starts with the people actually affected by the crisis and replaces the concept of aid with one of partnership. This publication provides a simplified and accessible guide to this important agreement.