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Desertification, and climate change: the case for greater convergence

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Abstract

Poor knowledge of links between desertification and globalclimate change is limiting funding from the Global Environment Facility foranti-desertification projects and realization of synergies between theConvention to Combat Desertification (CCD) and the FrameworkConvention on Climate Change (FCCC). Greater convergence betweenresearch in the two fields could overcome these limitations, improve ourknowledge of desertification, and benefit four areas of global climate changestudies: mitigation assessment; accounting for land cover change in thecarbon budget; land surface-atmosphere interactions; and climate changeimpact forecasting. Convergence would be assisted if desertification weretreated more as a special case in dry areas of the global process of landdegradation, and stimulated by: (a) closer cooperation between the FCCCand CCD; (b) better informal networking between desertification and globalclimate change scientists, e.g. within the framework of theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Both strategies wouldbe facilitated if the FCCC and CCD requested the IPCC to provide ascientific framework for realizing the synergies between them.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

    ALAN Grainger

  2. CSIRO National Rangelands Programme, PO Box 2111, Alice Springs, NT, 0871, Australia

    MARK Stafford Smith

  3. Dryland Management Consultant, PO Box 31, Magill 5072, SA, 5072, Australia

    Victor R. Squires

  4. Environmental Research Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 85706-6985, USA

    Edward P. Glenn

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  1. ALAN Grainger
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  2. MARK Stafford Smith
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  4. Edward P. Glenn
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Grainger, A., Stafford Smith, M., Squires, V.R. et al. Desertification, and climate change: the case for greater convergence. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 5, 361–377 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026537621437

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