Public Policy

Dr Alan Grainger is Senior Lecturer in Geography at the University of Leeds. He has carried out research into desertification since the early 1980s, having attended the UN Conference on Desertification in 1977. He is the author of two books and numerous journal papers in this field. Recent studies have covered such topics as the global mapping of desertification; evaluating uncertainty about the global extent of desertification; and constraints on access to scientific knowledge by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. In 2008 he prepared a plan for the first empirical global survey of desertification, at the request of the Secretariat of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. In 2009 he was a member of the core drafting committee of Working Group 1, "Monitoring and Assessment", of the Dryland Science for Development Consortium.