Introduction
Twenty years have passed since the last atlas of desertification was published.
Within that short period enormous global changes have taken place
in terms of human expansion and the impact that had on the environment.
Equally significant progress has been made in understanding the fundamentals
of human-environment interactions.This has been made possible, in part,
by the massive increase >and growth in the accessibility of global and
WAD3 thus begins at a very different place than WAD2 in terms of scientific
information and understanding.
That said, we are also confronted by the rapidly growing appreciation
of the complexity of the land degradation phenomenon and
all the human factors that both drive it and are derived from it.
As a consequence, rather than attempting to produce a comprehensive
global model that cannot deliver useful local or regional information,
WAD3 offers an approach that accommodates and embraces these
complexities and is intended to provide an information framework
from which to pursue solutions that fit specific local situations.