Almost seven years ago, the world's nations agreed to a sweeping Plan of Action to halt the process of destruction which we call desertification. Now, UNEP has just completed a two-years' assessment which reveals that the global threat posed by desertification, far from diminishing, has actually increased in severity.

Currently about 35% of the world's land surface is at risk, and the livelihoods of the 850 million people who live in these areas are directly threatened. Nearly three-quarters of the 45 million sq. km which make up the world's drylands, and which include the sub-humid tropics, is already affected—between half and a quarter of them, severely so. That is the measure of the problem facing the world community, which must act speedily if we are to avoid shortages leading to chaos on a scale hitherto unknown.

In the case of desertification, the main cause is not drought, as many still believe (though drought tends to exacerbate the problem) but human overexploitation of lands through over-cultivation, overgrazing, poor irrigation practices, and deforestation.

This message of warning and hope is the one which UNEP will convey to the representatives of probably more than 75 nations who will attend a special two-days' session (on May 17 and 18) of the meeting of our Governing Council in Nairobi this year (16-29 May 1984). The delegates will be presented with the findings of UNEP's assessment of the progress registered so far in applying the Plan of Action to Combat Desertification (PACD) which was agreed to by the 94 nations attending the United Nations Conference of Desertification (UNCOD) in 1977.

They will also be presented with a set of practical recommendations which, if applied properly, could go a long way towards improving the situation by the year 2000, bearing in mind that the goal set by UNCOD to stop desertification completely by then has been shown to be no longer feasible.