Summarised below are questions frequently raised with regard to the problem of desertification and the work of the UNCCD. Should you have additional questions, please do not hesitate to contact the secretariat at secretariat@unccd.int.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):

What is Desertification?

How can it be prevented and rehabilitated?

Is Desertification a global problem?

Why is it important to fight Desertification?

What is the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)?

What are National Action Programmes and National Reports?

What is the Conference of the Parties (COP)?

What is the Committee on Science and Technology (CST)?

What is the Committee for the Review of the Implementation of the Convention (CRIC)?

What is the relationship with other environmental conventions?

What progress has been made since the Convention entered into force?

What is Desertification? (back to top)
Desertification is not the natural expansion of existing deserts but the degradation of land in arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas. It is a gradual process of soil productivity loss and the thinning out of the vegetative cover because of human activities and climatic variations such as prolonged droughts and floods. What is alarming is that though the land's topsoil, if mistreated, can be blown and washed away in a few seasons, it takes centuries to build up. Among human causal factors are overcultivation, overgrazing, deforestation, and poor irrigation practices. Such overexploitation is generally caused by economic and social pressure, ignorance, war, and drought.

How can it be prevented and rehabilitated? (back to top)
Among practical measures undertaken to prevent and restore degraded land are prevention of soil erosion; improved early warning system and water resource management; sustainable pasture, forest and livestock management; aero-seeding over shifting sand dunes; narrow strip planting, windbreaks and shelterbelts of live plants; agroforestry ecosystems; afforestation and reforestation; introduction of new species and varieties with a capacity to tolerate salinity and/or aridity; and environmentally sound human settlements.

Because poverty forces the people who depend on land for their livelihoods to overexploit the land for food, energy, housing and source of income, and desertification is thus both the cause and consequence of poverty, any effective strategy must address poverty at its very centre. It must take into account the social structures and land ownership as well as pay proper attention to education, training and communications in order to provide the fully integrated approach which alone can effectively combat desertification.

Is Desertification a global problem? (back to top)
Desertification is a worldwide problem directly affecting 250 million people and a third of the earth's land surface or over 4 billion hectares. In addition, the livelihoods of some one billion people who depend on land for most of their needs, and usually the world's poorest, in over one hundred countries are threatened.

Though desertification affects Africa the most, where two-thirds of the continent is desert or drylands, it is not a problem confined to drylands in Africa. Over 30 percent of the land in the United States is affected by desertification. One quarter of Latin America and the Caribbean is deserts and drylands. In Spain, one fifth of the land is at risk of turning into deserts. The growing severity of the threat in the Northern Hemisphere is also illustrated by severe droughts in the United States and water scarcity in southern Europe. In China, since the 1950s, sand drifts and expanding deserts have taken a toll of nearly 700,000 hectares of cultivated land, 2.35 million hectares of rangeland, 6.4 million hectares of forests, woodlands and shrub lands. Worldwide, some 70 percent of the 5.2 billion hectares of drylands used for agriculture are already degraded and threatened by desertification.

Why is it important to fight Desertification? (back to top)
Desertification is at the root of political and socio-economic problems and poses a threat to the environmental equilibrium in affected regions. The land's loss of productivity exacerbates poverty in the drylands, forcing its farmers to seek a way of living in more fertile lands or cities. In fact, 135 million people, the equivalent to the population of Germany and France combined, are at risk of being displaced as a consequence of desertification. Some 60 million people are expected to eventually move from the desertified areas in Sub-Saharan Africa towards northern Africa and Europe in the next 20 years. Every year, between 700,000 and 900,000 Mexicans leave their rural dryland homes to find a living as migrant workers in the United States. Half of the 50 armed conflicts in 1994 had environmental causal factors characteristic of the drylands.

Desertification also has grave natural consequences. It makes land areas flood-prone, causes soil salinisation, results in the deterioration of the quality of water, silting of rivers, streams and reservoirs. Unsustainable irrigation practices can dry the rivers that feed large lakes; the Aral Sea and Lake Chad have both seen their shorelines shrink dramatically in this way. Land degradation is also a leading source of land-based pollution for the oceans, as polluted sediment and water washes down major rivers.

What is the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)? (back to top)
On a global plane, the issue of desertification was first discussed at the UN Conference on Desertification held in Nairobi, Kenya in 1977. But due to a lack of support, both administrative and financial, attempts to efficiently tackle the problem of desertification were crippled. Therefore in 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) or so called Rio Earth Summit recommended the elaboration of a United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). The Convention, the only convention stemming from a direct recommendation of the Conference's Agenda 21, was adopted in Paris on 17 June 1994 and entered into force in December 1996. It is the first and only internationally legally binding framework set up to address the problem of desertification. The Convention is based on the principles of participation, partnership and decentralisation - the backbone of Good Governance. It now has more than 180 country Parties to the Convention, making it truly global in reach.

What are National Action Programmes and National Reports? (back to top)
National Action Programmes are at the heart of the Convention and constitute the conceptual and legal framework for implementing it at the national and local levels. Their purpose is to identify the factors contributing to desertification and the practical measures necessary to combat desertification and mitigate the effects of drought. The Convention indicates that affected countries shall elaborate and implement them with the full participation of local communities and all interested stakeholders and fully integrate them with other development programmes.

Further, country Parties and observers regularly report to the Conference of the Parties on progresses made in the implementation of the Convention. Based on these National Reports, developments are evaluated and analysed during the Committee for the Review of the Implementation of the Convention (CRIC), a subsidiary body of the Conference of the Parties held annually, in order to identify and share best practices, shortcomings and constraints, with a view to improving the implementation of the Convention.

What is the Conference of the Parties (COP)? (back to top)
The Conference of the Parties is the supreme decision-making body. It reviews the implementation of the Convention; promotes and facilitates the exchange of information; approves the budget and activity programmes of its subsidiary bodies; cooperates with international organisations, NGOs & other related conventions; and meets on a biannual basis as at 2001.

What is the Committee on Science and Technology (CST)? (back to top)
Established under article 24 of the Convention as a subsidiary body of the COP, the Committee on Science and Technology (CST) provides the COP with information and advice on scientific and technological matters related to combating desertification and mitigating the effects of drought. Consisting of government representatives, the committee identifies priorities for research, and recommends ways of strengthening cooperation among researchers. The Convention encourages the protection of traditional knowledge that is conducive to sustainable development while also facilitating the exchange of latest data, information and technology through the CST.

What is the Committee for the Review of the Implementation of the Convention (CRIC)? (back to top) Established by COP 5 in 2001 as a subsidiary body, it reviews and analyses national reports submitted to the COP that describe the status of the Convention's implementation by parties and observers with a view to improve the coherence, impact and effectiveness of policies and programmes aimed at restoring the agro-ecological balance in the drylands. It meets annually as from 2002. Its terms of reference are subject to renewal at COP 7 in 2005.

What is the relationship with other environmental conventions? (back to top)
Desertification is closely linked with global climate change and loss of biodiversity. Synergies are strongly encouraged between the three so-called Rio conventions, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), to widen the impact of measures undertaken. It underlines the need to coordinate activities related to environmental protection and natural resource management and the complementary nature of the three conventions at all levels. A Joint Liaison Group (JLG) was thus established in 2001 between the secretariats of the three conventions. The JLG collects and shares information on the work programmes and operations of each convention.

What progress has been made since the Convention entered into force? (back to top)
The Convention has now reached maturity and is evolving from preparation of National Action Programmes to their implementation. Assessment of Programmes by the Parties in 2000 and 2001 showed that the strengthening of capacities for key actors at the local level proved successful in identifying and addressing challenges linked to sustainable development. The bottom-up approach of the Convention helped strengthen relationships between governments and local communities, particularly in larger countries. It also favoured the decentralised involvement of stakeholders and natural resources end users in the development process. During CRIC 1 held in November 2002, already many innovative solutions were identified by country Parties. The exchange of information on best practices and their replication worldwide are expected to further propel an effective fight against desertification and strengthen South-South and North-South cooperation among countries and regions.