Fragile arid and semi-arid ecosystems are in urgent need of integrated conservation approaches that can contribute significantly to prevent and reduce the widespread on-going land degradation and desertification processes, such as erosion, flooding, over grazing, drought, and salinization.The DESIRE project will establish promising alternative land use and management conservation strategies based on a close participation of scientists with stakeholder groups in the degradation and desertification hotspots around the world. This integrative participatory approach ensures both the acceptability and feasibility of conservation techniques, and a sound scientific basis for the effectiveness at various scales.DESIRE employs a bottom up approach such as is favoured by the UNCCD:- degradation and desertification hotspots and stakeholder groups will be identified in all countries surrounding the Mediterranean, and in 6 external nations facing similar environmental problems,- desertification indicator set s will be defined in a participatory approach and a harmonized information system will be constructed to organize socio-economic and geo-information data and tools for active dissemination;- new and existing conservation strategies will be defined wit h the stakeholder communities;- these strategies will be implemented in the field, and monitored and modelled to quantify their effectiveness at various scales;- the results will be extrapolated using both the indicator sets, geo-information data, and integrated modeling systems combining socio-economic and environmental aspects;- finally the results will be translated to a series of practical guidelines for good agricultural practices and environmental management, which will be disseminated to practitioners, agricultural extensionists, governmental authorities, policy makers, NGOs, land users, land owners, and local communities.
