ST. PETERSBURG, August 8. /TASS/. Russia needs a comprehensive national program to better combat desertification in the country, lead research fellow of the Institute of Geography at the Russian Academy of Sciences said.

"For a long time now, we have been pointing to <…> the need to develop a national program to fight desertification," German Kust said. It should involve "collaborative efforts from different sectoral ministries and authorities," he noted.

According to him, the program would allow the coordination of all state institutions involved in land management, as currently more than ten different organizations handle such issues. "The land resource we have is actually distributed in control systems - we counted twelve various agencies and ministries in our country that are responsible to a certain extent for land, land use, land management and land registration, while these authorities, I regret saying, have very little coordination thus far," he added.