Land degradation and desertification are some of the world’s greatest environmental challenges in the light of a rapidly growing world population and increasing demand for food, fibre, and biomass energy. Asia is the largest and most populated continent in the world, with a total land area of 4.3 billion hectares.

Degraded areas on the continent include expanding deserts in mainland China, India, Iran, Mongolia, and Pakistan, the sand dunes of Central Asia, the steeply eroded mountain slopes of Nepal, and the deforested and overgrazed highlands of the Lao People‘s Democratic Republic.

Asia holds almost 60 per cent of the world’s population. Of this, nearly 70 per cent live in rural areas depending directly on land and land-based ecosystem services. As a result, Asia is the continent most severely affected by land degradation, desertification and drought in terms of the number of people affected.

Within the Sustainable Development Goals, the world set a target (Goal 15) to protect, restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.