The process of desertification does not have climatic boundaries. Justify with examples.

Desertification is the degradation of once-productive land into desert-like conditions. Though the UNCCD frames it for arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid regions, its drivers — deforestation, overgrazing, over-cultivation and unscientific irrigation — operate in every climatic zone, so the process ignores climatic boundaries.

Evidence across climatic zones

• Semi-arid tropics: overgrazing and fuelwood cutting degrade the Sahel and the Aravalli fringe of Rajasthan, allowing dune advance.
• Temperate continental: diversion of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya for cotton irrigation shrank the Aral Sea, creating the saline Aralkum desert.
• Sub-humid irrigated plains: waterlogging and salinization plague canal commands in Punjab, Haryana and the Indira Gandhi Canal area.
• Humid tropics: deforestation-driven soil erosion in the Amazon and shifting (jhum) cultivation in Nagaland and Mizoram degrade land despite heavy rainfall — ISRO's Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas records severe degradation even in these high-rainfall states.
• Cold and temperate drylands: expansion of the Gobi feeds dust storms over northern China, while historic overgrazing stripped soils in Iceland.

The Atlas maps about 97.85 million hectares — nearly 30 per cent of India — as degraded, spread across almost all agro-climatic zones. Because the driver is unsustainable human pressure rather than climate alone, land restoration — India's pledge of 26 million hectares by 2030 and the Bonn Challenge — must be pursued everywhere, not merely on desert margins.