At IFAD we are confronted every day by the human cost of desertification and land degradation. We work with subsistence farmers, nomadic herders, day labourers and others whose survival depends on ecologically fragile or marginal lands. Through our work over the past 30 years, it has become clear that to eliminate rural poverty we must also address the issue of how land and natural resources are managed.

The Bedouin communities in the Badia rangelands can attest to the importance of halting desertification. Covering 10 million hectares of central and eastern Syria, the area is known for its poor soils and low rainfall. Bedouin communities herd about 12 million animals here.

After years of severe drought and intensive grazing, the Badia was badly degraded. Today, an IFAD-supported project has restored vegetation in about one-third of the Badia rangelands. The Bedouin herders, with their extensive local knowledge, worked with project experts to draft and implement management plans, determining how many animals should graze in a given area at a given time.

The project took three approaches to rehabilitation: resting, reseeding and planting. More than 930,000 hectares of the Badia have been regenerated by resting, a further 225,000 have been reseeded, and about 94,000 hectares have been planted with nursery shrubs. Breeders have seen the average productivity of the land increase as much as tenfold, from 50 to 500 feed units per hectare. Native plants that had long since disappeared have returned. Rehabilitation has not only provided fodder, it has led to a healthier ecosystem; birds, insects and animals have started to return to the area. 

This is just one of the thousands of success stories that highlight the importance of programmes that United Nations agencies undertake to slow desertification and protect the world’s drylands from degradation.

As the world grows warmer and biodiversity declines, there is an added urgency to make natural resource management an investment priority. The United Nations Decade for Deserts and the Fight Against Desertification will bring global attention to this important issue.

When governments, UN agencies and other partners work together, we can ensure that experiences like those of the Bedouin communities in the Badia rangelands become the rule – and not the exception.