All publications and documents

Often, when people think of drylands, they associate them with deserts and hostile living conditions, economic hardship and water scarcity. But that is not what drylands are all about. If managed well, the drylands are also fertile and capable of supporting the habitats, crops and livestock that sustain nearly one-third of humanity. Drylands offer opportunities for local populations…

United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs in its new report "The World Economic and Social Survey 2011: The Great Green Technological Transformation" stated that we need $1.9 trillion per year over the next 40 years for incremental investments in green technologies to “avert the likely catastrophic impacts of climate change and environmental degradation.” UN recommends we…

This publication provides a basic roadmap for mainstreaming drought risk management into development planning and programming at different levels. It suggests and outlines the steps to define drought risks within a given context. It also presents a methodology for translating risk assessments and matrices into specific policy measures, planning instruments and measurable interventions.

The purpose of this publication is to highlight the development challenges faced by people who live in drylands and to outline how these challenges can be tackled successfully. Covering about 40 percent of the world’s land surface, dryland is home to more than 2 billion people in nearly 100 countries, of which about half remains under poverty. It will be impossible to meet the…

Coordinated by UNEP’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) and prepared by 18 UN agencies through the UN’s Environment Management Group (EMG), involving over 60 development and environment researchers and practitioners, the report sets out a common vision and agenda for UN agencies to step up their efforts to protect and revitalise dryland, and improve the economic and social well…

This study provides a framework for a global assessment; part of that framework includes systematically selected country studies. In a comprehensive assessment, the country studies must cover all settings representatively. In this study, only indicative case studies are provided. The country case studies suggest that the cost of action is lower than the cost of inaction for seven of the eight…