All publications and documents

Established in 1994, the United Nations to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is the sole legally binding international agreement linking environment and development to sustainable land management. The Convention addresses specifically the arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas, known as the drylands, where some of the most vulnerable ecosystems and peoples can be found. The 10-year strategic plan…

A working group pooling members of the international scientific community and civil society was formed in 2008 as a French initiative. It aims to address the imperatives outlined in the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification: developing a minimum set of indicators to help policy makers assess desertification and land degradation trends on different scales and also to implement the…

Drylands have the potential to play a big role in climate mitigation and, in doing so, to deliver significant co-benefits. Changes in dryland management practices can lead to greater carbon sequestration. Although, on per unit area basis, the carbon storage potential of dryland ecosystems is lower than for moist tropical systems, but the large area of drylands means that overall they have…

Land degradation is an underrecognized threat to global well-being which will be aggravated by climate change. The poor are hurt most, because they depend largely on the land (agriculture, livestock, forests) for their livelihood. Estimating the cost of land degradation is difficult but it must amount to many billions of dollars globally per year, reducing agricultural GDP by several percentage…

This book is a collection of plenary sessions papers and selected invited panel papers presented in the 26th International Conference of Agricultural Economists held at Gold Coast, Australia, from 12th to 18th August 2006. Beginning with the presidential address by Prabhu Pingali and the Elmhirst lecture by Hans Binswanger dealing with global issues of agricultural growth, economic development,…

The paper presents a summary of the challenges, opportunities and policies adopted by the three East African countries – Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania – to address the production and marketing of goods and services from drylands. It also provides recommendations on policy that could enhance production and marketing of relevant products. Being the driest areas of the region, the drylands of East…