Combating Desertification and Drought: Regional Strategies and Global Impact

Across large stretches of Rajasthan, Marathwada, Bundelkhand and Saurashtra, fertile soil is slowly turning barren. This slow-motion crisis has a name: desertification. It is not about deserts spreading like sand dunes in a film, but about productive land losing its ability to support crops, livestock and people. Closely tied to it is drought, a recurring shortage of water that pushes already fragile land over the edge. Together, these two challenges threaten food security, rural livelihoods and the health of entire ecosystems. Understanding how they work, and what is being done to combat them, is essential for anyone studying environmental policy and sustainable development.

What desertification really means 🔗

Desertification is often misunderstood. It does not refer to existing deserts like the Thar growing larger. Instead, it describes land degradation occurring specifically in dryland regions – the arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid zones. When the biological and economic productivity of these drylands declines, the result is desertification. The land does not literally become a sandy desert, but it loses fertility, vegetation and the capacity to sustain life.

This distinction matters because drylands are far more important than they appear. Drylands cover more than 45% of the Earth’s land surface, supply 44% of the world’s agriculture and support half of its livestock. One in three people on the planet lives in these regions. When such land degrades, the consequences ripple through agriculture, water supply and migration patterns.

The two engines: climate and human activity 🔗

Desertification is driven by a combination of natural climatic variation and human pressure. On the climate side, erratic rainfall, prolonged dry spells and rising temperatures strip moisture from the soil. On the human side, the pressures are familiar: over-cultivation that exhausts nutrients, overgrazing by livestock that strips away protective vegetation, and deforestation that exposes soil to wind and water erosion. The two engines reinforce each other. Degraded land holds less water, which worsens drought, and drought in turn accelerates degradation.

The scale of the problem in India 🔗

The numbers are sobering. According to the Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India, published by ISRO’s Space Applications Centre, roughly 97.85 million hectares – close to 30% of the country’s total geographical area – underwent land degradation in 2018-19. A large portion of this falls within the dryland category, qualifying as desertification.

The trend is also worrying. Desertification increased in 28 of 31 states and Union Territories between 2011-13 and 2018-19, according to a closer reading of the atlas. A handful of states carry much of the burden. Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and several others together account for nearly a quarter of the degraded area relative to the national total.

Where degradation is fastest 🔗

Surprisingly, some of the fastest rates of desertification are not in the obvious dry zones. Several northeastern states, including Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura, have featured among the regions with the highest rates of degradation. In these areas, deforestation and loss of green cover are the main culprits, showing that desertification is not limited to deserts or even to dry climates. The single biggest process nationally is the loss of soil cover through water erosion, driven by rainfall and surface runoff.

The natural consequences 🔗

The damage from desertification builds in stages, and each stage feeds the next.

Soil erosion: When vegetation is removed, the topsoil – the thin, nutrient-rich layer where crops grow – is washed away by rain or blown away by wind. This top layer takes centuries to form and only years to lose.

Loss of vegetative cover: Fewer plants mean less root structure to hold soil together, less organic matter returning to the ground, and reduced habitat for the insects, birds and animals that keep an ecosystem balanced.

Reduced soil productivity: As erosion and vegetation loss continue, the land’s ability to produce food collapses. For a country where agriculture supports the livelihoods of a large share of the population, this directly threatens food security and rural incomes. More than half of India’s degraded land is rainfed farmland or forest, the very land that feeds the nation and shields it from environmental shocks.

Drought: the close companion of desertification 🔗

Drought and desertification are deeply linked. Drought is a prolonged shortage of water relative to what an area normally expects. In India, the dependence on the monsoon makes drought a frequent visitor. About 75% of annual rainfall arrives in a single monsoon season, so a weak or delayed monsoon can trigger widespread water stress.

The types of drought 🔗

Experts and disaster managers distinguish between several forms of drought, and understanding the categories helps explain why responses differ:

Meteorological drought: This is the starting point – a significant shortfall in rainfall. The India Meteorological Department treats seasonal rainfall below 75% of the long-term average as a meteorological drought, classifying it as severe when the deficit crosses 50%.

Agricultural drought: Also called soil moisture drought, this occurs when there is not enough moisture in the soil to support healthy crops, leading to wilting and crop failure even when rainfall is only moderately below normal.

Hydrological drought: Here the shortage shows up in rivers, lakes, reservoirs and aquifers, with groundwater levels falling below what rainfall can replenish.

A socio-economic dimension emerges when these shortages begin to affect food supply, employment and incomes. Because nearly half of the country’s cropped area is rainfed, drought is not just an environmental event but a social and economic one. The National Disaster Management Authority’s guidelines stress assessing the full damage – to crops, water, livestock and human health – before designing a response.

Measures to combat desertification and drought 🔗

The good news is that desertification can be slowed, halted and even reversed. The solutions combine better land management with large-scale policy action.

Water resource management 🔗

Since water scarcity drives both drought and degradation, managing water wisely is central. This includes rainwater harvesting, building check dams, watershed development that slows runoff, and recharging groundwater. Treating a watershed as a single unit – from ridge to valley – helps retain soil and moisture where they are most needed.

Sustainable livestock and farming 🔗

Overgrazing strips land of its protective cover, so rotational grazing, controlled stocking and pasture development help vegetation recover. On the cropping side, climate-resilient crops suited to low-rainfall areas, along with practices that maintain soil health, reduce the pressure that leads to degradation.

Afforestation and restoration 🔗

Planting trees and restoring forest cover anchors the soil, improves moisture retention and rebuilds ecosystems. Afforestation is the backbone of most national restoration programmes, particularly in regions where deforestation has been the main driver of degradation.

Policy action and the global framework 🔗

India has tied its land restoration efforts to ambitious targets. At the UNCCD COP14 hosted in Delhi in 2019, the country raised its goal of restoring degraded land from 21 million hectares to 26 million hectares by 2030. To reach this, the government has avoided creating an entirely new machinery and instead linked existing programmes. In a notable move, the rural employment guarantee scheme has been mobilised to fund land restoration work such as soil and moisture conservation, rainwater harvesting, afforestation and pasture development. The National Action Plan to Combat Desertification, first introduced in 2001 and revised since, brings together afforestation schemes, forest funds and irrigation planning under one umbrella.

Why global cooperation is essential 🔗

Desertification respects no borders, which is why the world built a shared legal framework. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification was adopted in Paris in 1994 and entered into force in 1996. It remains the only internationally binding agreement dedicated to the issue, with 197 parties. Its central goal is Land Degradation Neutrality, aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, aiming to balance degradation with restoration so there is no net loss of healthy land.

The need for cooperation is urgent. The world loses around 100 million hectares of healthy land to degradation every year, and global funding for restoration, while rising, still falls far short of what is required. Events like the annual Desertification and Drought Day keep the issue in public view, but the harder work happens through national action programmes, scientific monitoring and shared financing. For a problem that affects billions of people and vast land areas, no single country can solve it alone.

What do you think? If nearly a third of the country’s land is already degraded, should land restoration be treated with the same urgency as a natural disaster like a flood or cyclone? And how might linking environmental restoration to rural employment change the way communities view conservation?

References

1. https://www.unccd.int/convention/overview
2. https://enb.iisd.org/articles/united-nations-convention-combat-desertification
3. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1727987
4. https://www.downtoearth.org.in/climate-change/despite-pm-modi-s-assurance-land-degradation-desertification-increasing-78586
5. https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-news-analysis/land-degradation-and-desertification-in-india
6. https://www.legacyias.com/isros-report-on-land-degradation-in-india/
7. https://nidm.gov.in/PDF/pubs/NDMA/13.pdf
8. https://www.droughtmanagement.info/literature/UNW-DPC_NDMP_Country_Report_India_2014.pdf
9. https://www.indiawaterportal.org/articles/indias-target-combat-land-degradation-and-desertification
10. https://www.unccd.int/news-stories/stories/india-mobilizes-its-social-security-scheme-fund-land-restoration
11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_to_Combat_Desertification
12. https://www.wri.org/news/statement-desertification-cop-produces-mixed-results-land-and-drought