Desertification never "lingers". It is a multidimensional dynamic process being intensified by large scale monoculture by transnational GMO agribusiness. Agriculture if pursued prioritized as profit motivated business will always inevitably result in disequilibrium - also not something that "lingers" but advances in dimensions not addressed by 'specialist' corporate paradigms. Exclusive of FIRST fostering local family farming and regional food supplies, of the known tried and tested seed varieties, and cessation of extractive economic practices, the corporate paradigm is ecocidal, ethnocidal, and genocidal.

Let's not forget that desertification in Iraq has been dramatically intensified by the U.S.-led "wars" on Iraq. The U.N. is also responsible for this. When you destroy a country's infrastructure and leave it to rot and install a corrupt government that has absolutely no concern for the indigenous farmers and is incapable of negotiating with neighboring states over the waters in the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, you end up letting the land dry up when there is a drought and causing a many-thousands-of-years-old system of sustainable agriculture - one that has persisted in spite of past droughts and floods - to die.

More crap from a Moony.

"World Can Beat Desertification"? If, by "world", the "Earth" is meant, yes. Stop messing with nature, and, with time, nature can heal itself.

Desertification can be stopped and reversed - but that would first of all require humility and an unselfish agenda. But utter selfishness and addiction to meat eating prevents many people from seeing the effect of overgrazing. Some people throw out all kinds of bogus arguments to "prove" that grazing, or, controlled grazing, can actually help in the recovery of arid lands. But this has been shown to be a false claim, with questionable assumptions and faulty reasoning, and perhaps even using wrong "evidence". And yet, this convenient lie has now become so popular as it allows the continuation of grazing. "Controlled" grazing may be better than any grazing, but is NOT better than letting nature go to work. But this point has been muddied by one unsavory character who moved out of Africa and has been spreading his falsehood elsewhere.
The first step towards reversing the damage is to stop activities that caused the damage. As with climate change, people will talk about everything but those things that may require a reexamination and change in lifestyle. The worst crime is to "teach" the hapless Africans as to the "benefits" of livestock raising and donate livestock to them. This donating of livestock business (by state governments) is now spreading in India too, and it is sheer insanity!

But how can desertification be "beaten". Since we are the cause of desertification, it is we that have to be beaten.

It sounds too much like the logic of war on terror. We are the causes of terror, and it flashes back on us, so we have to bring more war and terror. On it goes, in exponential fashion, only limited by organisational disability, plus a blessed capacity to inspire the opposition.

And what is the UN, and all the many nations going to do about Desertification? It will not be beaten if global carbon emissions are not drastically curtailed. And most governments are on the whole, stupid and corrupted, and look nothing like acting in time. Pandering to vested interests, quite often their own, with delay and obfuscation is their game.

With every degree C of warming, the propensity of soil to dry out quickens. Climate projections indicate the interiors of all large continents will become hotter and dryer. That means desert. When it does rain, floods will be more intensive. That means soil erosion. When it dries, bush fires will be devastating. Civilisation dies without a fertile and moistened soil base. Without it we cannot beat anything.

My safe prediction is that human kind will be beaten by nature over the long term, until the human population is small, marginalised, and stripped of all its harmful technology and behaviour. That is what "beaten" means. Its extinction or adaptation. Adaptation requires a stable equilibrium between environment and species. Its people that have to stop their own harmful actions, and the harmful actions of their governments.

Governments and people have a terrible record on this. They spend all their time denying their own role in helping to cause problems, while the size and interlinked nature of the problems grow in global scale. Eventually humanity has to be overwhelmed. The UN is incapable of publicly acknowledging this. The UN Secretary is a supposed part of government, showing it to be irrelevant and mostly harmful.

'Deserts keep growing around the world, but the process can be reversed if governments act in time, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday.'

Yeah, but the governments are not acting in time, now are they? And look at the UN itself???? All they do is provide cleanup units for every new war the Pentagon starts. No help there at all, and its all just words without meaning from Ban Ki-moon.