Millennium Development Goal Number Seven is particularly concerned with the safeguarding and provision of freshwater resources to all human.beings; this is a major challenge – and perhaps even the main challenge – for all the world’s drylands. SUMAMAD project aims at the sustainable management of marginal drylands, where the scarcity of water imposes restrictions for the productivity of each particular ecosystem. It is needed therefore to look into the entire water complex so as to promote a wise and sustainable water use. However,

As marginal drylands, all project sites share similar environmental constraints such as recurrent droughts,
water shortages, shallow soils and the threat of land degradation. As they occur in different economic,
political, social and cultural environments, it will be interesting to address similar bio-physical problems
from different perspectives stemming from varying anthropogenic factors. More importantly, the