World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought
Worldwide
From: 17.06.2015 to: 17.06.2015
This global awareness event is organized by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), who expressed that 17 June is a “unique occasion to remind everybody that desertification can be effectively tackled, that solutions are possible, and that key tools to this aim lay in strengthened community participation and co-operation at all levels.”
The slogan for this year’s celebration is ‘No such thing as a free lunch. Invest in healthy soil’, which refers to the focus: ‘attainment of food security for all through sustainable food systems.’
Since 1995, the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, 17 June, as declared by the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN), has been a recurring annual event to raise public awareness of the threats of desertification and the devastating effects of drought.
Over the past decades, global socio-political and environmental changes are affecting many fragile dryland mountain ecosystems: traditional agricultural practices are often abandoned hampering the conservation of the ecosystems and their capacity to support the needs of human societies. Dryland mountains are particularly vulnerable to desertification due to deforestation and vegetation degradation combined with the predominance of unstable soils on dangerous mountain slopes and extreme weather conditions.
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Photo: FAO/Dubravka Bojic
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