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Global Desertification: Building a Science for Dryland Development

2007; American Association for the Advancement of Science; Volume: 316; Issue: 5826 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1126/science.1131634

1095-9203

James F. Reynolds, Mark Stafford‐Smith, Éric F. Lambin, B. L. Turner, Michael Mortimore, Simon Batterbury, Thomas E. Downing, Hadi Dowlatabadi, Roberto J. Fernández, Jeffrey E. Herrick, Elisabeth Huber‐Sannwald, Hong Jiang, Rik Leemans, Tim Lynam, Fernando T. Maestre, Miguel Angel Ayarza, Brian Walker,

Rangeland and Wildlife Management

In this millennium, global drylands face a myriad of problems that present tough research, management, and policy challenges. Recent advances in dryland development, however, together with the integrative approaches of global change and sustainability science, suggest that concerns about land degradation, poverty, safeguarding biodiversity, and protecting the culture of 2.5 billion people can be confronted with renewed optimism. We review recent lessons about the functioning of dryland ecosystems and the livelihood systems of their human residents and introduce a new synthetic framework, the Drylands Development Paradigm (DDP). The DDP, supported by a growing and well-documented set of tools for policy and management action, helps navigate the inherent complexity of desertification and dryland development, identifying and synthesizing those factors important to research, management, and policy communities.