Developing a Baseline Survey for Monitoring Biophysical and Socio-economic Trends in Desertification, Land Degradation and Drought

This document presents proposals for the design and implementation of a Baseline Survey for the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). It has been prepared at the request of the Secretariat of the UNCCD. The Baseline Survey is to be initiated as part of the UNCCD's Ten Year Strategic Plan, and will form the starting point for monitoring long-term trends in desertification so that progress in implementing the UNCCD can be evaluated. ii. Challenges To monitor desertification effectively the Committee on Science and Technology (CST) of the UNCCD must tackle five major challenges. First, overcome technical difficulties in monitoring degradation of both vegetation and soil. Second, represent spatial variation in desertification. Third, adjust for temporal variation in vegetation cover linked to irregular variation in rainfall. Fourth, integrate social and economic aspects into the survey. Fifth, devise multi-scalar monitoring procedures, and institutions to implement these on a continuing basis. A baseline survey is a starting point for monitoring that provides a comprehensive characterization of a phenomenon in a specific year so that later changes in its attributes can be measured. It identifies not a potential hazard, but the actual status of the extent and degree of desertification in a given baseline year. This provides a marker with which status in future years can be compared. Ideally, national baseline surveys would be undertaken in all affected countries in the same year, but this is not always possible. Another strategy is to project all 3 national estimates from individual baseline years to a common international reference year, but this may incur considerable errors. The degree of degradation of soil and vegetation is assessed in relation to some ideal, non-degraded, benchmark status. In both cases, the spectrum of degradation is normally divided into discrete bands, ranging from Low degradation at one end to Very Severe at the other. To provide a comprehensive description of a phenomenon a set of indicators should be framed by a comprehensive conceptual framework. One possibility is to use the Driving Forces-Pressures-States-Impacts-Responses (DPSIR) framework. Previous attempts to devise sets of desertification indicators implicitly adopted a similar model. Structured using a DPSIR framework its components include: 1. Driving Forces: societal changes and indirect effects of climatic variation. 2. Pressures: land use, resource extraction and direct effects of climatic variation. 3. States: the quantity and quality of soil and vegetation resources. 4. Impacts: different types of changes in soil and vegetation; changes …