17 June

There is a close relationship between livelihood, ecosystem wellbeing and soils that are rich in biodiversity. Healthy soils produce life, and yet soil health depends a lot on how individuals use their land. What we do to our soils determines the quality and quantity of the food we eat and how our ecosystems serve us. Our increasing ecological interdependence also means enhancing soils anywhere enhances life everywhere. Where well tended, soil biodiversity will be a resource for use by future generations, and for services that are yet to be discovered.

In 1994, the United Nations General Assembly declared June 17 the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought to promote public awareness of the issue, and the implementation of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in those countries experiencing serious drought and/or desertification, particularly in Africa.

Past Observances
2010 : Enhancing soils anywhere, enhances life everywhere
2009 - Conserving land and water, securing our common future
2008 - Combating land degradation for sustainable agriculture
2007 - Desertification and climate change, one global challenge
2006 - The beauty of deserts, the challenge of desertification
2005 - Women and desertification

About World Day to Combat Desertification

In 1994, the United Nations General Assembly declared June 17 the "World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought" to promote public awareness of the issue, and the implementation of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in Those Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, Particularly in Africa.

Ever since, country Parties to the Convention, organizations of the United Nations System, international and non-governmental organizations and other interested stakeholders have celebrated this particular day with a series of outreach activities worldwide.

The Convention is the only internationally recognized, legally binding instrument that addresses the problem of land degradation in dryland. It enjoys a truly universal membership of 193 Parties.

The World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought is a unique occasion to remind everybody that desertification can be effectively tackled, that solutions are possible, and that key tools to this aim lay in strengthened community participation and co-operation at all levels.

Country Parties and civil society organizations are invited to organize events to celebrate the World Day to Combat Desertification as an additional opportunity to increase awareness raising and participation in the process.

Events

1462 – Vlad III the Impaler attempts to assassinate Mehmed II (The Night Attack) forcing him to retreat from Wallachia.
1497 – Battle of Deptford Bridge – forces under King Henry VII defeat troops led by Michael An Gof.
1565 – Matsunaga Hisahide assassinates the 13th Ashikaga shogun, Ashikaga Yoshiteru.
1579 – Sir Francis Drake claims a land he calls Nova Albion (modern California) for England.
1631 – Mumtaz Mahal dies during childbirth. Her husband, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan I, will spend the next 17 years building her mausoleum, the Taj Mahal.
1673 – French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet reach the Mississippi River and become the first Europeans to make a detailed account of its course.
1773 – Cúcuta, Colombia, is founded by Juana Rangel de Cuéllar.
1775 – American Revolutionary War: Colonists inflict heavy casualties on British forces while losing the Battle of Bunker Hill.
1789 – In France, the Third Estate declares itself the National Assembly.
1839 – In the Kingdom of Hawaii, Kamehameha III issues the edict of toleration which gives Roman Catholics the freedom to worship in the Hawaiian Islands. The Hawaii Catholic Church and the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace are established as a result.
1861 – Battle of Vienna, Virginia in the American Civil War.
1863 – Battle of Aldie in the Gettysburg Campaign of the American Civil War.
1876 – Indian Wars: Battle of the Rosebud – 1,500 Sioux and Cheyenne led by Crazy Horse beat back General George Crook's forces at Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory.
1877 – Indian Wars: Battle of White Bird Canyon – the Nez Perce defeat the U.S. Cavalry at White Bird Canyon in the Idaho Territory.
1885 – The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor.
1898 – The United States Navy Hospital Corps is established.
1901 – The College Board introduces its first standardized test, the forerunner to the SAT.
1910 – Aurel Vlaicu pilots a A. Vlaicu nr. 1 on its first flight.
1930 – U.S. President Herbert Hoover signs the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act into law.
1932 – Bonus Army: around a thousand World War I veterans amass at the United States Capitol as the U.S. Senate considers a bill that would give them certain benefits.
1933 – Union Station Massacre: in Kansas City, Missouri, four FBI agents and captured fugitive Frank Nash are gunned down by gangsters attempting to free Nash.
1939 – Last public guillotining in France: Eugen Weidmann, a convicted murderer, is guillotined in Versailles outside the Saint-Pierre prison
1940 – World War II: sinking of the RMS Lancastria by the Luftwaffe near Saint-Nazaire, France.
1940 – World War II: the British Army's 11th Hussars assault and take Fort Capuzzo in Libya, Africa from Italian forces.
1940 – The three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania fall under the occupation of the Soviet Union.
1944 – Iceland declares independence from Denmark and becomes a republic.
1948 – A Douglas DC-6 carrying United Airlines Flight 624 crashes near Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, killing all 43 people on board.
1953 – East Germany Workers Uprising: in East Germany, the Soviet Union orders a division of troops into East Berlin to quell a rebellion.
1958 – The Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing, in the process of being built to connect Vancouver and North Vancouver (Canada), collapses into the Burrard Inlet killing many of the ironworkers and injuring others.
1958 – The wooden roller coaster at Playland, which is in the Pacific National Exhibition, Vancouver, British Colombia, Canada opens. It is still open today.
1960 – The Nez Perce tribe is awarded $4 million for 7 million acres (28,000 km²) of land undervalued at 4 cents/acre in the 1863 treaty.
1961 – The New Democratic Party of Canada is founded by the merger of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and the Canadian Labour Congress.
1963 – The United States Supreme Court rules 8 to 1 in Abington School District v. Schempp against allowing the reciting of Bible verses and the Lord's Prayer in public schools.
1963 – A day after South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem announced the Joint Communique to end the Buddhist crisis, a riot involving around 2,000 people breaks out. One person is killed.
1971 – President Richard Nixon declares the U.S. War on Drugs.
1972 – Watergate scandal: five White House operatives are arrested for burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee, in an attempt by some members of the Republican party to illegally wiretap the opposition.
1981 – Hyatt Regency walkway collapse: In the Hyatt Regency Hotel the 2nd and 4th floor walkways collapse crushing 144 people to death, this was the worst structural failure in the United States.
1987 – With the death of the last individual of the species, the Dusky Seaside Sparrow becomes extinct.
1991 – Apartheid: the South African Parliament repeals the Population Registration Act which required racial classification of all South Africans at birth.
1992 – A "joint understanding" agreement on arms reduction is signed by U.S. President George Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin (this would be later codified in START II).
1994 – Following a televised low-speed highway chase, O.J. Simpson is arrested for the murders of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.

Holidays and observances

Bunker Hill Day (Suffolk County, Massachusetts)
Christian Feast Day:
Albert Chmielowski
Botolph (England)
Gondulphus of Berry
Hervé
Hypatius of Bithynia (Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic Churches)
Rainerius
June 17 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Day of German Unity, celebrated before October 1990. (West Germany)
Father's Day (El Salvador and Guatemala)
National Day, celebrates the independence of Iceland from Kingdom of Denmark in 1944.
Soviet Occupation Day (Latvia)
World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought (International)
Zemla Intifada Day (Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic)