HOW THE PROJECT IS TRANSFERABLE

Project outputs are channeled through the Spanish National Action Plan to combat Desertification (NAPD). The Spanish Directorate General for Nature Conservancy of the Ministry for the Environment, is responsible for the design, coordination and implementation of NAPD, and it is also co-promotor of SURMODES. Ideas and project results are therefore easily transferred to the successive draft versions of NAPD, as preliminary documents prior to its endorsement by the Spanish Parliament. Two aspects of this process deserve consideration

- A shift of the desertification concern to potentially threatened agricultural areas, through the hotspots identified in SURMODES.

- The Observatory Network that is being developed by SURMODES is a pioneer experience to provide standard methods to be applied by other networks of more technical nature. Such methods, among others, include two relevant aspects: (i) Maximising the quality, representativeness and associated scaling information of the data, and (ii) increasing the networking efficiency by the developemnt of suitable telemetry systems.

The final methodological outcomes, such as survey approaches, risk assessment and land condition indicators, are constrained to be simple and low cost to be applied at a wide scale in areas with sparse environmental information.

From this perspective results are thought to be easily transferable across the Mediterranean. Firstly, among the north-shore countries, with which Spain shares both environmental and socio-economic conditions. Secondly, among the southern Mediterranean countries which share many climatic and landscape characteristics with southern Spain. Finally, the approach could also be transferred to other desertification-affected countries in the world, since the proposed methods are consistent with a unifying concept of the desertification process.

The expected channels for sharing this approach will always be through the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), its Secretariat and its Committee for Science and Technology.