Work Plan

Desertification of the land is mainly driven by human activities, such as intensive agriculture, overgrazing, deforestation and changes in the local population, in combination with adverse physical environmental conditions. In order to understand and manage desertification, it is necessary to develop a framework that will take into account the various human activities (driving forces) that exert pressure on the physical environment together with changes in its quality (state). The changing physical environment in turn has impacts on other environmental and socio-economic issues such as loss in plant productivity, a decrease of farm income and flooding. Society usually responds to the changes and impacts by implementing environmental, general economic, and sectoral policies.

It is currently believed that desertification indicators can be developed to define the desertification risk for a certain piece of land and for continued environmental monitoring. Such indicators can be divided into a number of different types: (a) driving forces indicators (related to intensification of agriculture, overgrazing, increase of local population, increase of tourists); (b) pressure indicators resulting from the driving forces, imposing unsustainable land use practices and overexploitation of natural resources (deforestation, forest fires, ground water overexploitation); (c) state indicators related to the physical environment (soil water availability, soil erosion vulnerability, land suitability to support specific type of land use) and describing the extent to which an area will be affected by desertification; (d) impact indicators resulting from land degradation and desertification and related to on-site (loss in plant productivity, loss in farm income) or off-site impacts (flooding of lowland, dam sedimentation); and (e) response indicators related to implementation of programs for protecting areas from desertification (such as the application of sustainable farming systems, terracing, ground water recharge, storage of runoff water, controlled grazing, protection forest from fires).

This project will work within this framework of indicator types to develop a desertification indicator system specifically for Mediterranean Europe. The project is divided into three parts.

• In Part 1 there will be extensive collaboration with local stake holders in each of the four target areas in order to identify: impact indicators relating to perceptions of land function; driving force and pressure indicators relating to decision making; and response indicators relating to land management measures taken to combat desertification. A conceptual and database framework will be developed for these and the other indicators identified in the project.
  
• In Part 2, composite indicators will be developed combining these stakeholder-identified indicators with bio-physical and socio-economic state indicators already developed for Mediterranean Europe. Together they will form an environmentally sensitive area identification system, for use at the sub-national scale. In addition, coarse scale modelling of soil erosion, salinisation and channel processes will provide a regional degradation index at the Mediterranean-wide scale.
• In Part 3, the indicators of different scale and type will be combined into a desertification indicator system for Mediterranean Europe. The system will be used to explore different management options identified by the local stakeholders. There will be close collaboration with both local stakeholders and the National Committees to test the application of the indicator system to new regions and to validate the local identification of high risk areas and the implications of local scenario analyses. Finally the experiences gained in both the testing and validation will be formulated into guidelines for the UNCCD on the development and use of indicators to manage desertification.