Desertification affects arid regions throughout the world, causing underdevelopment of economies and inflicting destitution on the populations of vast areas and threatening them with famine. Reversing the processes by which desertification invades arable lands turning them into desolate wastes is one of the most crucial challenges facing the communities and nations of arid regions.

AGENDA 21 of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) emphasizes the need and proposes a wide range of activities to address land degradation in general and desertification in particular.  As a response to this challenge, more than 190 countries are Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

Desertification occurs because drylands ecosystems, which cover over one third of the world's land area, are extremely vulnerable to over-exploitation and inappropriate land use that result in underdevelopment of economies and in entranced poverty among the affected population. Poverty, political instability, deforestation, overgrazing, and bad irrigation practices can all undermine the land's productivity leading to underdevelopment of economies. Over 250 million people are directly affected by desertification. In addition, some one billion people in over one hundred countries are at risk. These people include many of the world's poorest, most marginalized, and politically weak citizens.

The international community has long recognized that desertification is a major economic, social and environmental problem of concern to many countries in all regions of the world. In 1977, the United Nations Conference on Desertification (UNCOD) adopted a Plan of Action to Combat Desertification (PACD). Unfortunately, despite this and other efforts, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) concluded in 1991 that the problem of land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas had intensified, undermining the development of economies as poverty increased, although there were "local examples of success".