Desertification affects several countries worldwide but is especially alarming in the least developed countries with particularly tragic consequences in Africa. Those countries suffering the most the impact of desertification and droughts are also countries where available data, technological knowledge and tools are usually scarce.

Combating desertification is essential to ensuring the long-term productivity of inhabited drylands. Unfortunately, past efforts have often failed, and around the world the problem of land degradation continues to worsen. Recognizing the need for an internationally coordinated approach, 192 governments have joined as of February 2008, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). The UNCCD Convention aims to promote effective actions through innovative local programmes and supportive international partnerships. During this 8th Conference of the Parties (COP-8), the UNCCD delegations agreed upon a 10-year strategic plan (2008-2018) to stem desertification and set measurable objectives with a timeline for achieving them. Amongst many objectives settings, the Conference of the Parties has defined a set of "Monitoring, Targets and Indicators" requirements to meet the strategic and operational objectives of the 10-year plan. The 10-year strategic plan provides a global framework to support the development and implementation of national and regional policies, programmes and measures that would prevent, control and reverse desertification, land degradation and mitigate the effects of drought worldwide.

ESA initiated the DesertWatch project with the objective to develop a geo-information system for assessing and monitoring land degradation using EO technologies, and for supporting national authorities in reporting to the UNCCD. While the DesertWatch project originally focussed on the Northern Mediterranean countries (Annex IV countries), this extension will study and demonstrate how the DesertWatch approach can be adapted to respond to the needs of non-Annex IV countries and in particular of those emerging from developing countries where access to field measurements is scarce and highly dispersed in quantity and quality.