The programme, which provides a UNESCO Global Network on Water and Development Information for Arid Lands was established in 2004 to strengthen the global capacity for management of water resources in arid and semi-arid regions.
In a project that covers several parts of arid and semi-arid China Beijing, Hebei, Qingdao and Shenyang, as well as the Hai basin and the smaller Turpan basin the World Bank has been promoting water conservation.
"But, ' adds Mel Reasoner, Director of the Mountain Research Initiative, "in many arid and semi-arid areas, people are dependent not only on the amount of glacier melt water, but on the timing of the water flow.
During the consultations governance challenges in arid and semi-arid areas were discussed and how institutions can be better equipped to deal with risks and uncertainties, emerging out of climate change, population growth, urban-rural tensions and groundwater pollution.
Qanats have proved to be an extraordinarily valuable and sustainable traditional technology, which throughout the historical ages has been transferred from ancient Persia where it originated to numerous countries all over the world, particularly those with arid and semi-arid climates.
One area of concern is the Sahel, a vast semi-arid area south of the Sahara desert.
Climate change, it says, will make food even scarcer in semi-arid countries such as Sudan.
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Mostly semi-arid, arid or desert, the country depends for its water on scattered catchments in highland areas.
These tiny, blind, hairless subterranean rodents live in social colonies of 100-300 animals in the harsh, semi-arid conditions of Africa.
Biomes such as river, estuary (the mouth of the Limary River), coastline, semi-arid sclerophyll shrub land and evergreen relict forest are represented.
They're used for reforestation projects in central Brazil where loggers, ranchers and farmers have cleared huge swaths of Amazon rainforest and semi-arid savannah.
Semi-arid California would seem a logical place to regulate water efficiency.
Farmers soak up about 85% of the border region's scarce water, and on the semi-arid land on both sides they grow thirsty cash crops like sugar cane.
He points to the success of micro-irrigation in semi-arid Gujarat, whose agriculture has grown at an average of 9.6% a year since the turn of the century, partly thanks to the creation of 500, 000 small ponds, dams and suchlike.
The Bank claims that exploiting oil resources is one of the few development options open to Chad, where 80% of the people live on less than a dollar a day, and 90% of the country is desert or semi-arid.
One country on the opposite side of Africa where that scenario may already have started to play out is Mali, the third poorest nation in the world, where rainfall levels have been in decline for the past 30 years across the semi-arid Sahel region.
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