"The village used to be on a hill north of this place," says Kakabai Baimedov, an elderly resident in the Turkmen village of Bokurdak, which has in recent years been forced to move by encroaching desert sands. While sand and the steppe have always been part of life in Central Asia, scientists have warned that climate change and other human activities are speeding up the processes of desertification and land degradation, with UN data showing the region to be especially vulnerable to rising