In the past three decades the rate of desertification has increased dramatically in the forty percent of land surface classified as arid or semi-arid, dealing particularly harsh blows to the besieged inhabitants of developing nations. During the present decade, the amount of land degraded by desertification will be double that of the past two decades. This translates into the staggering loss of about 58 thousand square kilometers of once productive land annually, an aggregate area about the size of the state of West Virginia.

By 1993, more than 3.6 billion hectares of the total area of the drylands7 was subject to some degree of desertification, representing nearly one quarter of the global land mass. On the African continent, eighty percent of sub-Saharan dry lands and rangelands, or about 1.5 billion hectares show significant signs of desertification, as well as seventy-two percent of the drylands in South America and seventy percent in Asia.

The purpose of this article is to assess the potential efficacy of the convention in the face of devastation of the world's dryland resources.

In this pursuit, the author will: 1) outline the causes and implications of desertification; 2) present a brief history of past efforts to battle desertification; 3) discuss the contours and the Convention; and 4) assess the prospects for the convention to make a meaningful difference in the struggle to save the world's land.