UNDP | Drylands Development Centre

The Millennium Development Goals in Drylands

The world has made much progress in fighting poverty and inequality, but much remains to be done in drylands. Achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will not be possible without due attention to the drylands, where close to half of the world’s poor - one billion people - live.

Unlike in high-rainfall areas, the implementation of MDGs in drylands face special challenges. These include:

sociocultural aspects such as the predominant nomadic lifestyles, gender inequalities, including demographics and traditional differentiation of male–female roles and conflicts in some countries;

economic challenges resulting in low investment due to poor infrastructure and limited markets;

climatic and ecological challenges that limit production such as low and unpredictable rainfall, frequent droughts, climate-change-induced aridity and land degradation (deforestation and desertification); and

policy and institutional challenges (low national priority, poor or no policies on management of, access to, and ownership of land and natural resources, and limited knowledge, information and awareness of the links between poverty, the environment and economics in the drylands.

Lack of investment in developing the drylands is often due to limited understanding of their importance and potential in achieving the MDGs. UNDP-DDC's Integrated Drylands Development Programme is committed to increase awareness on the importance of, and opportunities for, drylands development.

It provides policy, technical and programme support to developing countries to energize or fast-track achieving MDG targets in the drylands through its particular focus on the promotion of sustainable livelihoods and poverty alleviation (MDG1), sustainable management of natural resources (MDG7), women empowerment (MDG3) and the mobilization of partners and resources for drylands development (MDG8).

For more information on MDGs, please visit:

Related Publications and Resources

The Forgotten Billion: MDG Achievement in the Drylands
[15/09/10] The report, jointly produced by UNDP and UNCCD, assesses the issues of MDG achievement not from a state-centric perspective, but through a natural resource endowment lens. It notes that dryland-focused policy options need to be part of a greater endeavour to mainstream drylands issues into development frameworks to help the one billion poor people living in the drylands escape poverty. More...

The Drylands Imperative: Devolving Resource Rights and the MDGs in Africa
[01/07/09] The document analyzes a sample of existing or in-formulation policy frameworks governing access and security of tenure over major natural assets such as land, forests and wildlife. The fundamental question that runs through the analysis in the paper concerns the extent to which security of resource tenure can mediate the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals in Africa. More...

Implementing the MDGs in the Drylands of the World
[01/08/07] The paper highlights the economic and ecological potential of drylands, as well as the vast information accumulated over the last few decades on their strategic importance to national development and meeting the MDG targets. It advocates for a new strategy for catalyzing and fast-tracking development activities in selected dryland countries to ensure they achieve the MDGs by the 2015 deadline. More...

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The Millennium Development Goals in Drylands