An interactive map showing the ELC granted to Cambodia State Farm in 1998.

A factsheet showing key administrative and investment statistics of Kratie province including a geographical location and road network map of the province and information about ELC, SEZ and other investments.

A factsheet showing key administrative and investment statistics of the Svay Rieng province including a geographical location and road network map of the province and information about ELC, SEZ and other investments.

A presentation about wetland conservation in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam and integrated farming systems. The presentation includes aerial photography of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam in different seasons. The presenter then discusses soil formation, hydrology, land uses (including data on rice exports and shrimp demand), and threats to the region.

If legal instruments are not fully implemented, there is a risk they remain in the domain of virtual reality and wishful thinking.The UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has come a long way since it came into force in 1996, with current membership standing at 191 Parties. 2006 was a landmark year.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment projects that the intensification of freshwater scarcity in combination with continuous water extraction from delicate dryland ecosystems is likely to exacerbate desertification, thus leading to a downward spiral of ecological deterioration and a precarious depreciation of livelihoods in many developing regions.

Desertification is nowhere more serious than in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), stretching from Pakistan in the east to Morocco in the west, and from Ethiopia and Sudan in the south to Turkey in the north. Yet, many MENA countries have successfully rehabilitated large areas.

Hardest hit by desertification is Sub-Saharan Africa, where poverty is more widespread, preparedness for catastrophe is lower, and means for adequately coping with the phenomenon are very weak; two thirds of the arable land will be lost by 2025.The subcontinent needs improved integrated initiatives on local, national und multinational level for a sustainable natural resources management.

Despite ambitious desertification control programmes, the area of desertified land has expanded continuously since the establishment of the People's Republic of China, with increasingly serious impacts on important industrial and settlement areas. Only in the new millennium is a reversal of this trend in sight.

Morocco is one of the African countries in which implementation of the UNCCD has progressed the furthest.

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is one of the three conventions agreed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. But from the very outset it has led a marginal existence, because industrialized countries feel far less concerned with desertification than developing countries.

In the ten years since it came into being, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has had little or no effect on the further encroachment of deserts. More than 80 countries have submitted National Action Programmes to combat desertification, but they appear to lack the financial and political commitment to implement them.