Drought and Desertification (including International Year of Deserts and Desertification (IYDD)1 and World Day to Combat Desertification (WDCD)4)

Below is a checklist of Drought and desertification postal items (stamps, souvenir sheets, aerogrammes, postal cards, etc.). Catalog numbers, years of issue, and notes on the items featured are given when available. If readers know of additional information or images, please contact the authors using the e-mail addresses at the bottom of this page.

Please see the article "Desertification: Inappropriate images lead to inappropriate actions" by Stephen D. Prince and Pascal Podwojewski, which incorporates postage stamp images from this page and has concerns about many of the images used to depict desertification.

Below is a list of Drought and desertification on postal items (stamps, souvenir sheets, aerogrammes, postal cards, etc.).

¹Deserts are natural ecosystems, but desertification is a global problem. The 58th session of the UN General Assembly declared 2006 to be the International Year of Deserts and Desertification (IYDD), now expanded into the UN Decade for Deserts and the Fight Against Desertification (UNDDD), which runs from January 2010 to December 2020. The objective of the Year was to emphasize that desertification is a major threat to mankind and to raise awareness of the principal factors related to desertification: climate change, the loss of biodiversity, and human influences.
²WED: World Environmental Day
³The authors of this website have been unable to find any documentation related to the "Sécheresse-Solidarité" overprints. They were probably issued to draw attention to the trans-national aspect of the problem of drought in Africa, and possibly to contribute to a fund for African drought relief. However, it is not known whether or not the money obtained from the sale of these stamps actually did end up in any such fund.
⁴World Day to Combat Desertification (WDCD) (annually: 17 June): sponsored by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), first observed in 1995. In 2020, "World Day to Combat Desertification" (WDCD) became "World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought", or more simply "Desertification and Drought Day"..
⁵The Sahel is a semi-arid transition region that extends across Africa between the Sahara to the north and the wetter regions of equatorial Africa to the south. It is an ecologically vulnerable area. After years of above average rainfall, a drought came to the Sahel in the late 1960s. It marked the beginning of a generally dry period in the region. The Sahel drought was one of the factors that led to the establishment of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertifiction (UNCCD). Research has shown that rainfall variability is a major element in the environmental problems of the area, but that human influences also play a large role in the degradation of the land.
⁶This image shows the drying out of the Aral Sea between the years 2000 and 2014.

The table below is a Summary (by year of issue and WDCD ordinal number) of the World Day to Combat Desertification (WDCD) postal items listed in the WDCD table above. Included are the number of countries issuing WDCD items, as well as the number of WDCD items that were issued. WDCD themes and slogans are also provided. This summary is also available in spreadsheet form.

Below is a list of Drought and desertification on launch covers (including anniversary-of-launch covers).

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