The Drylands worldwide contain the largest concentrations of poverty and suffer the greatest pressures on their natural resources such as water, soils, and biodiversity. Their populations are extremely vulnerable to the adverse consequences of environmental changes related to climate variability and change, and are among the least able to cope effectively with them. Desertification alone, as a symbol of environmental threats in the Drylands, adversely affects the livelihoods of one billion (1,000,000,000!) people.

A gathering of 2,350 participants from 80 countries, including public officials, natural and social scientists, representatives of the private sector and international agencies, and members of nongovernmental and other civil-society organizations, met in Fortaleza, state of Ceará, Brazil, from August 16th to 20th, 2010, in the Second International Conference on Climate, Sustainability and Development in Semi-arid Regions (ICID+18). They exchanged information and lessons of the past two decades about sustainable development in Drylands around the globe and offered policy recommendations for consideration at the Rio+20 summit in 2012.

In 1992, the first ICID was instrumental to support the creation of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification and Mitigate the Effects of Droughts, the UNCCD. During the last 18 years, there was important institutional improvement, both at the international and national levels.

We have now the UNCCD and the two other Rio Conventions, the UNFCCC and the UNCBD, and certainly there is more awareness in regard to the environmental problems of degradation and desertification, as well as with the impacts of climate variability and change. Notwithstanding these improvements, these regions still lack priority, investments and support to their sustainable development.