Poverty and The Drylands

This paper takes as its initial premise the assumption that there are important and significant populations in the world's drylands who, given the right conditions and incentives, can achieve good livelihoods, accumulate assets to reduce vulnerability and escape from poverty. However, to make a convincing case it is necessary to challenge current wisdom on the distribution and condition of drylands populations, and build more realistic scenarios that decision makers can take seriously. This is a major task, and this paper will only set the challenge and introduce some of the new evidence that is required.