Participants gathered at a
United Nations meeting in New York yesterday (20th September) to
highlight the need for stronger action to protect the world's drylands, home to 2 billion people. More than 12 million hectares of productive
land are lost every year due to desertification, the equivalent of
losing an area the size of South Africa every decade according to the
Secretariat of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). 

While the term desertification often conjures up visions of land turning