Desertification occurs mainly in semi-arid areas bordering on deserts. Across the world, desertification affects the livelihoods of millions of people who rely on the benefits that dry land ecosystems can provide.In dry lands, water scarcity limits the production of crops, forage, wood, and other services ecosystems provide to humans. Dry lands are therefore highly vulnerable to increases in human pressures and climatic variability. Nearly 20% of the earth’s dry lands have already been degraded, and ongoing desertification threatens the world’s poorest populations and the prospects of poverty reduction.

Desertification occurs through land-degradation in arid, semi-arid and sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human factors. Desertification is not, as is commonly thought, the expansion of existing deserts. It affects nearly one billion people, or roughly one-sixth of the world’s population. It is responsible for the degradation of 73% of the world’s rangeland.

Desertification is wide spread and affects every continent apart from Antarctica. Degradation is especially severe in Africa, where nearly 70% of the land is desert or dry land, and where 73% of agricultural lands are already seriously or moderately degraded. Asia contains the largest amount of land affected by desertification of any continent. Nearly two-thirds of Latin America’s dry lands are moderately to severely desertified.

Desertification costs the world more than $40 billion annually in lost productivity. Researchers have established a definite link between desertification and poverty, and much of the migration in the developing world has been attributed to desertification.

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