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I want to focus on life on land; it's something tangible that everyone else and I can see. I also like the idea of more people having a good quality of life in general.

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15.3

By 2030, combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world

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Desertification is the process through which vegetation in drylands, including arid and semi-arid areas like grasslands or shrublands, diminishes and ultimately vanishes. This term does not describe the physical growth of existing deserts but instead refers to the factors that endanger non-desert ecosystems, potentially transforming them into deserts.

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Desertification is caused by two things

Climactic Change: Moisture Loss on a Global level due to altering patterns of weather and water around the world caused by global warming

Human Changes: These include overgrazing, deforestation and removal of the natural vegetation cover（by taking too much fuel wood）, agricultural activities in the vulnerable ecosystems of arid and semi-arid areas, which are thus strained beyond their capacity. These activities are triggered by population growth, the impact of the market economy, and poverty. Population levels of the vulnerable drylands have a close

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The dust bowl in the Americas, during the 1930's , was a big contribution to people knowing what Desertification was. Part of the great plains, what is supposed to be full of plant life, primarily grass, is turned into a desert. This was due to overfarming and drought.

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The world's great deserts were formed by natural processes interacting over long intervals of time. During most of these times, deserts have grown and shrunk independent of human activities. Paleodeserts, large sand seas now inactive because they are stabilized by vegetation, extend well beyond the present margins of core deserts, such as the Sahara. In some regions, deserts are separated sharply from surrounding, less arid areas by mountains and other contrasting landforms that reflect basic structural differences in the regional geology. In other areas, desert fringes form a gradual transition from a dry to a more humid environment, making it more difficult to define the desert border.
These transition zones have very fragile, delicately balanced ecosystems. Desert fringes often are a mosaic of microclimates. Small hollows support vegetation that picks up heat from the hot winds and protects the land from the prevailing winds. After rainfall the vegetated areas are distinctly cooler than the surroundings. In these marginal areas, human activity may stress the ecosystem beyond its tolerance limit, resulting in degradation of the land. By pounding the soil with their hooves, livestock compact the substrate, increase the proportion of fine material, and reduce the percolation rate of the soil, thus encouraging erosion by wind and water. Grazing and the collection of firewood reduces or eliminates plants that help to bind the soil.

This degradation of formerly productive land-- desertification--is a complex process. It involves multiple causes, and it proceeds at varying rates in different climates. Desertification may intensify a general climatic trend toward greater aridity, or it may initiate a change in local climate.

Desertification does not occur in linear, easily mappable patterns. Deserts advance erratically, forming patches on their borders. Areas far from natural deserts can degrade quickly to barren soil, rock, or sand through poor land management. The presence of a nearby desert has no direct relationship to desertification. Unfortunately, an area undergoing desertification is brought to public attention only after the process is well underway. Often little or no data are available to indicate the previous state of the ecosystem or the rate of degradation. Scientists still question whether desertification, as a process of global change, is permanent or how and when it can be halted or reversed.

Problem
Desertification became well known in the 1930's, when parts of the Great Plains in the United States turned into the "Dust Bowl" as a result of drought and poor practices in farming, although the term itself was not used until almost 1950. During the dust bowl period, millions of people were forced to abandon their farms and livelihoods. Greatly improved methods of agriculture and land and water management in the Great Plains have prevented that disaster from recurring, but desertification presently affects millions of people in almost every continent.
Increased population and livestock pressure on marginal lands has accelerated desertification. In some areas, nomads moving to less arid areas disrupt the local ecosystem and increase the rate of erosion of the land. Nomads are trying to escape the desert, but because of their land-use practices, they are bringing the desert with them.

It is a misconception that droughts cause desertification. Droughts are common in arid and semiarid lands. Well-managed lands can recover from drought when the rains return. Continued land abuse during droughts, however, increases land degradation. By 1973, the drought that began in 1968 in the Sahel of West Africa and the land-use practices there had caused the deaths of more than 100,000 people and 12 million cattle, as well as the disruption of social organizations from villages to the national level.

While desertification has received tremendous publicity by the political and news media, there are still many things that we don't know about the degradation of productive lands and the expansion of deserts. In 1988 Ridley Nelson pointed out in an important scientific paper that the desertification problem and processes are not clearly defined. There is no consensus among researchers as to the specific causes, extent, or degree of desertification. Contrary to many popular reports, desertification is actually a subtle and complex process of deterioration that may often be reversible.

Global Monitoring
In the last 25 years, satellites have begun to provide the global monitoring necessary for improving our understanding of desertification. Landsat images of the same area, taken several years apart but during the same point in the growing season, may indicate changes in the susceptibility of land to desertification. Studies using Landsat data help demonstrate the impact of people and animals on the Earth. However, other types of remote-sensing systems, land-monitoring networks, and global data bases of field observations are needed before the process and problems of desertification will be completely understood.

LEFT: Off-road vehicles significantly increase soil loss in the delicate desert environment of the western United States. In a few seconds, soils that took hundreds of years to develop can be destroyed (photograph by Terrence Moore).
RIGHT: Goat seeks food in the sparsely vegetated Sahel of Africa (photograph courtesy of the U S. Agency for International Development).

Local Remedies
At the local level, individuals and governments can help to reclaim and protect their lands. In areas of sand dunes, covering the dunes with large boulders or petroleum will interrupt the wind regime near the face of the dunes and prevent the sand from moving. Sand fences are used throughout the Middle East and the United States, in the same way snow fences are used in the north. Placement of straw grids, each up to a square meter in area, will also decrease the surface wind velocity. Shrubs and trees planted within the grids are protected by the straw until they take root. In areas where some water is available for irrigation, shrubs planted on the lower one-third of a dune's windward side will stabilize the dune. This vegetation decreases the wind velocity near the base of the dune and prevents much of the sand from moving. Higher velocity winds at the top of the dune level it off and trees can be planted atop these flattened surfaces.
Oases and farmlands in windy regions can be protected by planting tree fences or grass belts. Sand that manages to pass through the grass belts can be caught in strips of trees planted as wind breaks 50 to 100 meters apart adjacent to the belts. Small plots of trees may also be scattered inside oases to stabilize the area. On a much larger scale, a "Green Wall," which will eventually stretch more than 5,700 kilometers in length, much longer than the famous Great Wall, is being planted in northeastern China to protect "sandy lands"--deserts believed to have been created by human activity.

More efficient use of existing water resources and control of salinization are other effective tools for improving arid lands. New ways are being sought to use surface-water resources such as rain water harvesting or irrigating with seasonal runoff from adjacent highlands. New ways also being sought to find and tap groundwater resources and to develop more effective ways of irrigating arid and semiarid lands. Research on the reclamation of deserts also is focusing on discovering proper crop rotation to protect the fragile soil, on understanding how sand-fixing plants can be adapted to local environments, and on how grazing lands and water resources can be developed effectively without being overused.

If we are to stop and reverse the degradation of arid and semiarid lands, we must understand how and why the rates of climate change, population growth, and food production adversely affect these environments. The most effective intervention can come only from the wise use of the best earth-science information available.

Straw grids (one of which is shown at left) and vegetation irrigated by water from the Yellow River stabilize dunes in this part of China's Tengger Desert (shown at right) and protect a nearby railroad from windblown sand

From wasteland to vineyard. Ground water and underground channels help this vineyard flourish on land reclaimed from desert pavement in China's Turpan Depression.

This page is <https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/deserts/desertification/>
Maintained by Publications Service Center
Last modified 10/29/97

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The world's great deserts were formed by natural processes interacting over long intervals of time. During most of these times, deserts have grown and shrunk independent of human activities. Paleodeserts, large sand seas now inactive because they are stabilized by vegetation, extend well beyond the present margins of core deserts, such as the Sahara.

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It is estimated that 3.2 billion people currently live on degraded land, a number that represents more than 10% of the total land on our planet

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“Desertification is the greatest environmental challenge”

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Interview with Alain-Richard Donwahi, President of UNCCD: Desertification affects 168 countries and 10% of the world’s soils.

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Reforestation, Afforestation:

Planting trees and other vegetation helps prevent soil erosion, enhances soil fertility, and restores degraded ecosystems. This can be achieved through afforestation, which involves planting trees in areas where they were previously absent, or reforestation, which involves restoring degraded forest ecosystems.

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Explore the impact of desertification and solutions for a sustainable future. Our page discusses the effects of land degradation and how we can restore degraded lands.

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Ancient Method:

rock detention structures, can restore and create perennial freshwater wetlands, support riparian vegetation, sequester carbon and improve channel morphology and groundwater processes

This has been documented in southwestern United States and northern Mexico

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Ancient methods of preventing desertification and recovering from drought | U.S. Geological Survey

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Around the world, land degradation causes significant loss of biodiversity, impacts food security and water purification. Unsustainable land-use practices, increased population, and climate change further threaten the viability of native plants and wetland species, promote soil erosion, and limit water supplies.

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1930s Dust Bowl period in the United States, which devastated Midwestern states

The extensive work re-plowing the land into furrows, planting trees in shelterbelts, and other conservation methods has resulted in a 65 percent reduction in the amount of soil blowing. (It wasn't until rain came, that the drought ended

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Along the highway near Bakersfield, California. Dust bowl refugees, Nov. 1935. Library of Congress

1931
Severe drought hits the Midwestern and Southern Plains. As the crops die, the "black blizzards" begin. Dust from the over-plowed and over-grazed land begins to blow.

1932
The number of dust storms is increasing. Fourteen are reported this year; next year there will be 38.

March 4, 1933
When Franklin Roosevelt takes office, the country is in desperate straits. He will take quick steps to declare a four-day bank holiday, during which time Congress will come up with the Emergency Banking Act of 1933, which stabilizes the banking industry and restores people's faith in the banking system by putting the federal government behind it.

May 12, 1933
The Emergency Farm Mortgage Act allots $200 million for refinancing mortgages to help farmers facing foreclosure. The Farm Credit Act of 1933 establishes a local bank and sets up local credit associations.

June 18, 1933
The Civilian Conservation Corps opens the first soil erosion control camp in Clayton County, Alabama. By September there will be 161 soil erosion camps.

September 1933
Over 6 million young pigs are slaughtered to stabilize prices. With most of the meat going to waste, public outcry will lead to the creation, in October, of the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation. The FSRC will divert agricultural commodities to relief organizations. Apples, beans, canned beef, flour and pork products will be distributed through local relief channels. Cotton goods are eventually included to clothe the needy as well.

October 4, 1933
In California's San Joaquin Valley, where many farmers fleeing the plains have gone seeking migrant farm work, the largest agricultural strike in America's history begins. More than 18,000 cotton workers with the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU ) strike for 24 days. During the strike, two men and one woman are killed and hundreds injured. In the settlement, the union is recognized by growers, and workers are given a 25 percent raise.

May 1934
Great dust storms spread from the Dust Bowl area. The drought is the worst ever in U.S. history, covering more than 75 percent of the country and affecting 27 states severely.

June 28, 1934
Roosevelt signs the Taylor Grazing Act, which allows him to take up to 140 million acres of federally-owned land out of the public domain and establish grazing districts that will be carefully monitored. One of many New Deal efforts to heal the damage done to the land by overuse, the program is able to arrest the deteriorationsc but cannot undo the damage that has already been done.

This same day, the Frazier-Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act is approved. This act restricts the ability of banks to dispossess farmers in times of distress. Originally effective until 1938, the act will be renewed four times until 1947, when it will expire.

December 1934
The "Yearbook of Agriculture" for 1934 announces, "Approximately 35 million acres of formerly cultivated land have essentially been destroyed for crop production.... 100 million acres now in crops have lost all or most of the topsoil; 125 million acres of land now in crops are rapidly losing topsoil...."

January 15, 1935
The federal government forms a Drought Relief Service to coordinate relief activities. The DRS buys cattle in counties that are designated emergency areas, for $14 to $20 a head. Those unfit for human consumption - more than 50 percent at the beginning of the program - are destroyed. The remaining cattle are given to the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation to be used in food distribution to families nationwide. Although it is difficult for farmers to give up their herds, the cattle slaughter program helps many of them avoid bankruptcy. "The government cattle buying program was a God-send to many farmers, as they could not afford to keep their cattle, and the government paid a better price than they could obtain in local markets."

April 8, 1935
FDR approves the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, which provides $525 million for drought relief, and authorizes creation of the Works Progress Administration, which will employ 8.5 million people.

April 14, 1935
Black Sunday. The worst "black blizzard" of the Dust Bowl occurs, causing extensive damage.

April 27, 1935
Congress declares soil erosion "a national menace" in an act establishing the Soil Conservation Service in the Department of Agriculture (formerly the Soil Erosion Service in the U.S. Department of Interior). Under the direction of Hugh H. Bennett, the SCS will develop extensive conservation programs that retain topsoil and prevent irreparable damage to the land. Farming techniques such as strip cropping, terracing, crop rotation, contour plowing, and cover crops are advocated. Farmers are paid to practice soil-conserving farming techniques.

December 1935
At a meeting in Pueblo, Colorado, experts estimate that 850,000,000 tons of topsoil has blown off the Southern Plains during the course of the year, and that if the drought continues, the total area affected would increase from 4,350,000 acres to 5,350,000 acres by the spring of 1936. C.H. Wilson of the Resettlement Administration proposes buying up 2,250,000 acres and retiring it from cultivation.

February 1936
Los Angeles Police Chief James E. Davis sends 125 policemen to patrol the borders of Arizona and Oregon to keep "undesirables" out. As a result, the American Civil Liberties Union sues the city.

May 1936
The SCS publishes a soil conservation district law, which, if passed by the states, would allow farmers to set up their own districts to enforce soil conservation practices for five-year periods. One of the few grassroots organizations set up by the New Deal still in operation today, the soil conservation district program recognized that new farming methods needed to be accepted and enforced by the farmers on the land rather than bureaucrats in Washington.

January 20, 1937
Roosevelt addresses the nation in his second inaugural address, stating, "I see one-third of the nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished... the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

March 1937
FDR's Shelterbelt Project begins. The project calls for large-scale planting of trees across the Great Plains, stretching in a 100-mile wide zone from Canada to northern Texas, to protect the land from erosion. Native trees, such as red cedar and green ash, are planted along fence rows separating properties, and farmers and workers from the Civilian Conservation Corps are paid to plant and cultivate them. The project is estimated to cost 75 million dollars over a period of 12 years. When disputes arise over funding sources (the project was considered to be a long-term strategy, and therefore ineligible for emergency relief funds), FDR transfers the program to the WPA , where the project had limited success.

1938
The extensive work re-plowing the land into furrows, planting trees in shelterbelts, and other conservation methods has resulted in a 65 percent reduction in the amount of soil blowing. However, the drought continues.

1939
In the fall, the rain comes, finally bringing an end to the drought. During the next few years, with the coming of World War II, the country is pulled out of the Depression and the plains once again become golden with wheat.

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Timeline: The Dust Bowl | American Experience | PBS

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For nearly a decade, drought gripped the Great Plains. Explore a timeline of events.

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of Argentina’s total land area of 270 million hectares, 100 million hectares are affected by erosion

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Land degradation: Efforts to restore soil take root in Latin America

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In Latin America, a region badly affected by land degradation, initiatives by governments and environmental organisations seek to halt and reverse damage

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This is info within the last 6 years for Africa, research on agricultural (including Desertification)

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Africa Open D.E.A.L: Open Data for Environment, Agriculture and Land & Africa’s Great Green Wall

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The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the African Union Commission (AUC) led a land-use data collection and analysis between 2018 and 2020. With the support of the Panafrican Agency of the Great Green Wall (GGW), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and 30 African countries, FAO and the AUC coordinated the data collection operation on a scale unseen before in agriculture, environment, and land use. The Africa Open D.E.A.L (Data for Environment, Agriculture and Land) initiative has made Africa the first continent to complete the collection of accurate, comprehensive, and harmonized digital land use and land-use change data. It provides a detailed snapshot of the continent, captured through more than 300 000 sampling points collected by 350 operators in two years. Analysts were trained to use Collect Earth, an open-source tool developed by FAO with the support of Google. Over 100 parameters were collected on each sampling point of about 0.5 hectares, including tree counts, farmlands, wildfires, and existing infrastructure. Data were analyzed to highlight land-use change over the past 20 years and the potential for restoration at the national level for every country. The very high-resolution imagery allowed analysts to assess places with difficult field accessibility. The data survey has revealed 7 billion previously unrecorded trees outside forests for the first time, among other findings of the first consistent land use representation of the continent, and discloses more forests and more arable lands than were previously detected. This fact-based information finds that the area of the continental Great Green Wall initiative has 393 million hectares of land with restoration potential and opportunities and that 350 million hectares of cropland are cultivated in Africa, more than double that of the European Union. The survey exposes huge opportunities for the management of the environment, agriculture, and land use in Africa, and increases countries’ ability to track changes and conduct analyses for informed sustainable production, restoration interventions, and climate action. Africa Open DEAL data and information are embedded within FAO’s Hand-in-Hand Initiative geospatial platform and are accessible to anyone through EarthMap.org.

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In Uzbekistan they adopted an integrated approach to sustainable land management through NBS, the RESILAND CA+ program addresses common challenges and promotes sustainable practices across multiple land uses, combating land degradation and desertification.

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Embracing Nature’s Resilience: Combating Desertification in Central Asia with Nature-Based Solutions

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Drylands in Central Asia are among the most rapidly degrading and climate-vulnerable areas worldwide. Desertification caused by climate change and human activities has led to land degradation, soil erosion, and loss of vegetation and biodiversity that is costing Central Asia over 5% of regional GDP.

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New research shows how the world's oases have grown and shrunk over the past 25 years as water availability patterns changed and desertification encroaches on these wet refuges.

There has been a clear emphasis on oases but no evidence to suggest the shrinking number could halt or rever

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World’s oases threatened by desertification, even as humans expand them

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Oases are important habitats and water sources for dryland regions, sustaining 10% of the world’s population despite taking up about 1.5% of land area. But in many places, climate change and anthropogenic activities threaten oases’ fragile existence. New research shows how the world’s oases have grown and shrunk over the past 25 years as water availability patterns changed and desertification encroaches on these wet refuges.

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A transition from humid to dry land is underway that has shrunk the area available to grow food, costing Africa 12% of its GDP and depleting our natural buffer to rising temperatures

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Three-quarters of Earth's land has become drier since 1990.

Droughts come and go - more often and more extreme with the incessant rise of greenhouse gas emissions over the last three decades - but burning fossil fuels is transforming our blue planet. A new report from scientists convened by the United Nations found that an area as large as India has become arid, and it's probably permanent.

A transition from humid to dry land is underway that has shrunk the area available to grow food, costing Africa 12% of its GDP and depleting our natural buffer to rising temperatures. We have covered several consequences of humanity's fossil fuel addiction in this newsletter. Today we turn to the loss of life-giving moisture - what is driving it, and what we are ultimately losing.
This roundup of The Conversation's climate coverage comes from our award-winning weekly climate action newsletter. Every Wednesday, The Conversation's environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 40,000+ readers who've subscribed.
Why is the land drying out so fast? It's partly because there is more heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases emitted from burning fossil fuels. This excess heat has exacerbated evaporation and is drawing more moisture out of soil.

'Oil, not soil'

Climate change has also made the weather more volatile. When drought does cede to rain, more of it arrives in bruising downpours that slough the topsoil.

A stable climate would deliver a year's rain more evenly and gently, nourishing the soil so that it can nurture microbes that hold onto water and release nutrients.

This is the kind of soil that industrial civilisation inherited. It's disappearing.

"Soil is being lost up to 100 times faster than it is formed, and desertification is growing year on year," says Anna Krzywoszynska, a sustainable food expert at the University of Sheffield.

"The truth is, the modern farming system is based around oil, not soil."

Fossil fuels have unleashed agriculture from the constraints of local ecology. Once, the nutrients that were taken from the soil in the form of food had to be replaced using organic waste, Krzywoszynska says. Synthetic nitrogen fertilisers, made with fossil energy at great cost to the climate, changed all that.

Next came diesel-powered machinery that brought more wilderness into cultivation. Farm vehicles as heavy as the biggest dinosaurs now churn and compact the soil, making it difficult for earthworms and assorted soil organisms to maintain it.

Tractors and chemicals served humanity for a long time, Krzywoszynska says. But soil is now so degraded that no amount of fossil help can compensate.

"Across the world, soils have been pushed beyond their capacity to recover, and humanity's ability to feed itself is now in danger."

Green pumps and white mirrors

The primary way that we have been making up for lost food yield is turning more forests into farms. This is accelerating our journey towards a drier, less liveable world because forests, if allowed to thrive, create their own rain.

"Water sucked up by tree roots is pumped back into the atmosphere where it forms clouds which eventually release the water as rain to be reabsorbed by trees," say Callum Smith, Dominick Spracklen and Jess Baker, a team of biologists at the University of Leeds who study the Amazon rainforest.

"In the Amazon and Congo river basins, somewhere between a quarter and a half of all rainfall comes from moisture pumped from the forest itself."

Some experts have argued that the UN report understates Earth's growing aridity by overlooking the water that is held in snow caps, ice sheets and glaciers. Climate change is melting this frozen reservoir, which also serves as a seasonal source of water.

"And as water in its bright-white solid form is much more effective at reflecting heat from the sun, its rapid loss is also accelerating global heating," says Mark Brandon, a professor of polar oceanography at The Open University.

How do we adapt our relationship with the land to remoisturise the world? Krzywoszynska argues that there is no easy solution, but the future of food-growing "is localised and diverse".

"To ensure that we eat well and live well in the future, we'll need to reverse the trend towards greater homogenisation which drove food systems so far."

The good news, according to Krzywoszynska, is that farmers are experimenting with methods that restore the soil even as they produce a diverse range of nutritious food. These innovators need rights and secure access to the land, the opportunity to share their experiences and financial and political support.

"Regenerating land is a win-win, for humans and their ecosystems, if we dare to look beyond the immediate short-term horizon," she says.

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Rising desertification shows we can't keep farming with fossil fuels

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Tractors and chemicals have served food production well, but at a cost to healthy soil.

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"We conclude that, while desertification and land degradation are current and growing threats in the EU, the Commission does not have a clear picture of these challenges, and the steps taken to combat desertification lack coherence. The Commission has not assessed progress towards meeting the commitment to achieving land degradation neutrality by 2030."

This evidence suggest that I should switch to a different goal, there seems to be no evidence to suggest it's getting better, any research I did for a paper would only highlight how bad we are doing

Alternatively, I could write about how people aren't doing much, especially in the EU to combat desertification.

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Special Report: Combating desertification in the EU: a growing threat in need of more action

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The auditors examined whether the EUTF for Africa is well-designed and well-implemented.

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Desertification in the Sahel: Causes, Effects, and Solutions

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Desertification in the Sahel: Causes, Effects, and Solutions

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This article delves into the factors contributing to desertification in Africa's Sahel region, examining both natural and human-induced causes. It also discusses the socio-economic impacts on local communities and proposes strategies for mitigation, including sustainable land management practices.

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Desertification increased in the Sahel, especially during the second half of the twentieth century. How did desertification affect the Sahel? Know more.

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This piece highlights successful community-driven reforestation projects in Ethiopia aimed at combating land degradation. It emphasizes the importance of secure land tenure and local participation in ensuring the sustainability of these environmental restoration efforts.

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Restoring Degraded Lands with Community-Led Tree Planting in Ethiopia

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Ethiopia is blessed with diverse landscapes, however, faces significant environmental challenges and degraded lands, including deforestation.

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Focusing on the Recaatingamento project in Brazil, this article showcases how 35 communities collaborated to conserve and restore nearly 100,000 acres of Caatinga dry forest. It highlights the integration of preserving native vegetation, managing livestock populations, and investing in sustainable income sources to combat desertification.

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A community-led strategy to save Brazil’s dry forests from desertification

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UAUÁ, Bahia, Brazil — In the backlands of northern Bahia state, nobody ever thought about putting up a fence in the woods. According to the tradition that governs fundo de pasto communities, the Caatinga dry forest belongs to everyone: Everything there, from trees to cactuses, should remain freely accessible. That’s what a fundo de pasto […]

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This article discusses the challenges posed by desertification, land degradation, and drought on soils, vegetation, and water resources. It highlights the resulting increase in greenhouse gas emissions and the threat to vulnerable populations due to decreased agricultural productivity and food production.

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Tackling desertification, land degradation, and drought for food security

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Desertification, land degradation, and drought affect soils, vegetation, and water, increase greenhouse gas emissions, and threaten vulnerable populations due to less agricultural productivity and food production. The Global Environment Facility and its partners have been helping countries across sub-Saharan Africa tackle these interwoven challenges in an integrated way through the Resilient Food Systems program, with the goal of promoting greater resilience and more sustainable agricultural and food production.

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I think I want to research the issue of desertification, which must be addressed to reach goal #15. I will focus on the Great Green Wall initiative in Africa, a large-scale project aiming to restore degraded landscapes across the Sahel. I want to explore solutions like reforestation, soil restoration, and sustainable agriculture. Resources will include case studies on the initiative's progress, reports from the UNCCD, and data on the social and economic impacts of land restoration. I want to research this because the Great Green Wall stands as a good example to set for taking action toward bettering the global desertification problem

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How does desertification impact food security for communities living near the Thar Desert in India and Pakistan?

Edit 02/03/25: in hindsight, too specific...

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How does unsustainable agricultural irrigation contribute to desertification in regions like Central Asia

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How do current water extraction practices for urban development influence desertification in the United States?

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What are the social and economic consequences of desertification-induced displacement in Sub-Saharan Africa?

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How does desertification affect biodiversity in the Kalahari Desert ecosystem?

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What are the impacts of reforestation projects like the Great Green Wall initiative in mitigating desertification in the Sahel region?

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What are the most cost-effective, scalable soil rehabilitation techniques for desertified land globally?

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What are the most cost-effective, scalable soil rehabilitation techniques for desertified land globally?

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Li, Juan, et al. "Evaluation algorithm of alhagi sparsifolia desertification control under different irrigation amounts /Algoritmo de evaluacion para el control de la desertificacion del alhagi sparsifolia bajo diferentes cantidades de riego." Earth Sciences Research Journal, vol. 24, no. 4, Dec. 2020, pp. 449+. Gale Academic OneFile, dx.doi.org/10.15446/esrj.v24n4.91626. Accessed 3 Feb. 2025.

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Chaudhuri, Sriroop, et al. "Land Degradation–Desertification in Relation to Farming Practices in India: An Overview of Current Practices and Agro-Policy Perspectives." Sustainability, vol. 15, no. 8, Apr. 2023. Gale Academic OneFile, dx.doi.org/10.3390/su15086383. Accessed 3 Feb. 2025.

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https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&u=j101912&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA743462726&retrievalId=27c14787-9636-43ca-902b-773b8d5712d4&inPS=true&linkSource=interlink&sid=bookmark-AONE

# data[].attributes.body
https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&u=j101912&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA743433525&retrievalId=80095126-1c51-416d-bd69-6a2eff385fb3&inPS=true&linkSource=interlink&sid=bookmark-AONE