Living Land

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Combating desertification and land degradation

in the drylands: research integration in practice

Mahmoud Solh, Director General and Lamia El-Fattal, Executive Assistant to the Director General,

International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas

esertification seriously impairs the ability of

the land in some of the driest, and often the

poorest, parts of the world to provide food and

other resources. It is a major threat to food security

and livelihoods at the global level with heavy economic,

social and environmental costs. The drylands of the

world are the most vulnerable to desertification.

The drylands are home to over 2 billion people, or approxi-

mately one-third of the world’s population. Poverty is

concentrated in the drylands which are home to the poorest

and most marginalized people in the world, with 16 per

cent of the population living in chronic poverty. Women

and children suffer the most. Characterized by water scar-

city, the drylands — which cover more than 40 per cent of

the land surface globally — have less than 8 per cent of the

world’s renewable water resources. They are challenged by

frequent droughts, excessive use of groundwater resources,

salinization of irrigated lands, land degradation and loss of

biodiversity, all of which lead to desertification — the loss

of fertile land. Climate change, which in the dry areas leads

mostly to lower rainfall, greater rainfall variability, higher

temperatures, shorter growing seasons and seawater intrusion

in coastal areas, is compounding these challenges and further

threatening livelihoods in the drylands. As a result, there is

greater pressure on the already limited natural resources,

leading to overexploitation and mismanagement of land and

water resources, loss of valuable biodiversity, desertification,

increased poverty, poorer nutrition, migration and increased

political instability which together pose significant threats to

national and international development efforts.

The experiences of the International Center for Agricultural

Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), after more that 37 years

of research for development in the drylands, confirm that

Image: ICARDA

Salinity threatening irrigated land in Iraq; complementary approaches are helping to reduce the negative effects of salinity on Iraqi agriculture

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