Latin America is mostly associated with tropical and sub-tropical climates but about a quarter of its surface actually belongs to the drylands, having hyper-arid, arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid climates.

The first challenge towards an effective drought monitoring system in Latin America is to build awareness of drought as a recurrent phenomenon.

The Latin America and Caribbean Soil Bureau Network has been formally established during the meeting held in Rio in July 2010.

This section integrates the perspectives from two documents [i.e. Magrin et al. 2007 and IPCC 2012] published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the impacts of climate extremes on the problem of Desertification, Land Degradation and Drought (DLDD) in Latin America region and its adaptation and vulnerability to the underlying processes.