Land degradation and periodic droughts are becoming more frequent in Paraguay, as a result of the interaction of inadequate land use, poor farming practices, and production systems.

Paraguay’s Western Region or Paraguayan Chaco comprises extremely fragile ecosystems due to the climatic and edaphic conditions that define it, aggravated in recent decades by human intervention. The Paraguayan Chaco covers an area of approximately 260,000 km², where the introduction and increasing use of agricultural products and technology have allowed the massive and extensive exploitation of natural resources. This has involved massive deforestation, tillage and soil preparation, introduction and extensive implantation of pastures and associated forage crops, cattle, extensive burning, and damming of water courses, which have led to incipient processes of superficial salinization, occurrence of salts in lagoons and dams, incidence of anthills, desalination plants, increased evapotranspiration due to lack of effective coverage, eventual floods, and prolonged droughts, among others. The Chaco territory is predominantly under agricultural use, with little government regulation, limited actions aimed to mitigate impacts, and without the possibility of preventing associated or specific processes correlated to this extensive region.

Paraguay’s Eastern Region covers approximately 147,000 km². Most of the country’s economic activities are concentrated in this region. Although it is not characterized as a desertification risk area, its natural resources are subject to degradation processes. Agriculture has been, historically, the main livelihood means, followed by extensive livestock ranching, which have led to the massive clearing of forests for the use of the land. The monoculture of cotton by small-holding farmers and the introduction of extensive crops (such as wheat and soybeans) have caused considerable soil losses due to water erosion; soil degradation is aggravated by the widespread use of pesticides.

The agricultural sector will continue to play an important role in the economic growth and social development of both regions of the country.

According to Paraguay’s Land Degradation Neutrality Report submitted to the UNCCD, 51.65% of Paraguay's lands are degraded (SDG indicator 15.3.1) as of 2015. Artificial surfaces, croplands, and grasslands are the land cover types that experienced the largest changes in extent between 2000 and 2015. Pastures, in particular, experienced the greatest increase in surface area (close to 30,000 km²), followed by croplands (11,754 km²). This increase has occurred at the expense of tree-covered areas, the extent of which decreased in over 39 thousand km².

Some 73.65% of the area that had not undergone change of use during the 2000–2013 period remained in the dynamic classes of: increasing productivity, stable but not stressed, stable but stressed. Values ​​corresponding to early signs of deterioration and decreasing productivity represent 25.66%. Areas covered with trees, meadows, and croplands showed increasing productivity levels. Both wetlands and croplands have a similar distribution in the category of stable productivity, with a larger area in the category of increasing productivity, and a reduction in area towards the categories of decreasing productivity.

The greatest soil organic carbon (SOC) losses were produced by the conversion of areas covered with trees into Artificial Surfaces, Cultivation and Other land, which is mainly the product of the affected surface and, secondly, by the intensity of the carbon content change. Although changes from other uses to Settlements did not comprise very large areas, the loss SOC content reached a significant volume, close to 2 million tons, as a result of the intensity of the change in content between categories.