"Desertification" is a serious environmental problem mainly caused by human activities combined with environmental changes. Progressing desertification in extensive region on our planet has been affecting and will continue to impact human society including global environment and food security at present and in future. The United Nations adopted the Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in 1994, and the necessity of positive promotion to combat desertification was confirmed in the world.

Although desertification was estimated to affect one forth of all land area and one sixth of all populations, their exact values have not been clarified until now. Therefore, the Conference of the Parties (COP) of UNCCD has repeatedly required the establishment of scientific methods on evaluation and monitoring of desertification. The Group of Expert was installed under the Committee on Science and Technology (CST) of UNCCD in 2002 for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of CST activities including the examination and discussion on Desertification Monitoring and Assessment (DMA). In Asia, the "Thematic Program Network 1 (TPN1)", the first activity in Asian region to combat desertification under UNCCD, is concentrating to examine the DMA. In Japan, it has been recognized that the related researches for contributing and supporting to these international activities should be promoted from the scientific standpoint.

"Desertification" is closely related to natural and socioeconomic conditions in each local area, while in the meantime, there should be some universal processes. It is necessary to develop the systematic methods for evaluating desertification by comparison of individual activities in each desertificated region, even at the viewpoints of evaluating countermeasures. Therefore, the synthetic activities must be important by sharing the knowledge/information in different desertificated regions on the evaluation/monitoring of the present state in order to find out the effective direction for combating desertification.

In this symposium, we try to compare the present state of desertification and desertification researches in the representative Asian region, to clarify the characteristics and problems of desertification in common and in each unique local region, and also to examine the direction of desertification research to be advanced in near future.

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