World Day to Combat Desertification

The World Day to Combat Desertification is celebrated every year on June 17 all over the world in order to highlight the urgent need to curb the process of desertification and to strengthen the visibility of this serious drylands issue on the international environmental agenda.

The Observance of World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought was decided by yhe Resolution A/RES/49/115 on 19 Dec 1994 in the 92nd plenary meeting of The United Nations General Assembly.

The theme for this year is «Desertificaton and Climate Change - One Global Challenge»

Desertification directly affects the lives of more than 650 million people in 110 countries and threatens more than one billion people. The hardest hit are rural poor people who depend on land for survival.

Fighting desertification is essential to ensuring the long-term productivity of drylands where people live. Each year, 12 million hectares are lost to deserts. That is enough land to grow 20 million tonnes of grain. Unfortunately, efforts to combat this growing problem have often failed

17 June represents an opportunity to reinforce the message that desertification is not a fatality, that solutions exist, and that it can be effectively tackled through strengthened community participation and cooperation at all levels.

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