Sustainable development and policies against desertification

During the last century, many countries experienced considerably (direct and indirect) impacts on environmental quality that are not yet fully understood. The relationship between economic growth and the consumption of natural capital makes it difficult to identify scenarios for a truly sustainable development (Salvati, 2013). For instance, the interactions between economic development, social inequalities and governance policies, in relation with environmental quality, should be better addressed (Galeotti, 2007; Salvati et al., 2013a; Cimini et al., 2013; Corona et al., 2014; Colantoni et al., 2015a; Marchetti et al., 2015; Rontos et al., 2016). In this respect, it is essential to identify processes that act as immediate causes and those representing latent factors of land degradation, as well as to recognize their effects in both the short- and long-term. The debate on sustainable development is focusing on complex interactions between bio-physical and socioeconomic factors, debating on the possibility of reconciling different concepts of 'sustainability' with the aim to formulate strategies promoting development and environmental quality together (Arrow et al., 1995; Smiraglia et al., 2016). Land degradation is a clear example of what has been discussed so far in Mediterranean environments, where landscape and geographical characteristics are relatively fragile (Ibanez et al., 2008; Salvati et al., 2012a), human pressures have sometimes an irreversible impact on natural environments (Salvati and Zitti 2005, 2012; Bajocco et al., 2012; Salvati et al., 2012a, 2013a; Colantoni et al., 2015a; Di Feliciantonio and Salvati, 2015; Karamesouti et al., 2015; Delfanti et al., 2016; Zambon et al., 2017, 2018). In this perspective, the resulting 'net degradation' is mainly caused by anthropogenic factors (Mairota et al., 1998; Fernandez, 2002; Wilson and Juntti, 2005; Johnson and Lewis, 2007).