There are strong grounds to believe that the drylands are home to great numbers of very poor people. Four years ago, Nelson et al. estimated that of the world's poor, about 325 million lived on favoured lands, while 630 million lived on marginal agricultural lands, forested areas and drylands. The effects of increasing populations on marginal lands which leads to increased impoverishment have been commented on by many authors.

The most important contributing factor towards degradation of fragile lands in Sub-Saharan Africa is a nexus of poverty, rapid population growth and inadequate progress in increasing crop yields. Poor people in their quest for food and other livelihood needs are increasingly expanding cultivation into forests, steep hillsides and other fragile areas ... reducing fallow periods to the point where soils are inadequately rejuvenated, pursuing land management practices that deplete soil nutrients ... overgrazing pasture ... cutting trees for fuelwood ... When studying the location of poor people in different parts of the world, there is a clear correlation between those living in degraded areas and high levels of impoverishment.