Advances in desertification and climate change research: Are they accessible for application to enhance adaptive capacity?

Sustainable living in arid lands is the goal of many, including local residents, policy-makers and scientists. Research into desertification and climate change has the potential to significantly enhance livelihoods of resident people. It also has the potential to contribute to their capacity for risk reduction, improved natural resources management and adaptation to climatic and other changes in multi-stressor systems. This potential is not frequently realised. To effectively ensure that scientific insights and contemporary technologies are applied, active involvement of and feedback from those who apply and use the benefits offered by science and technology are required. Scientists and technologists have to address the diverse, mainly non-technical, aspects required to understand and cope with endemic climate variability, desertification and climate change. They need to appropriately tailor their approaches to disseminate results, and communicate their findings in a way that can be understood and readily implemented by policy-makers, politicians and communities. At the same time, they must learn from experiences gained through implementation by users at all levels.The challenges of making the necessary connections between the combinatory effects of desertification and climate change and their effective application are explored and tested. It was found that several key factors contribute to making the necessary connections to facilitate application on all levels of research advances. These include translation, information dissemination, communication, communication platforms, boundary organisations and leadership contributing to knowledge, motivation and capacity. The purpose of this paper is to assess research experiences from integrated land and water resource management, the application of renewable energy and energy efficiency, and local-level monitoring of natural resources and their application to the challenges of desertification and climate change. The conclusion of this assessment is the identification and description of a common framework that can be applied to address the challenges of desertification and climate change.