Land degradation and desertification are among the most important environmental issues being faced by drylands. Despite its importance and the enormous research effort devoted to it in the last decades, desertification is a topic surrounded by controversy and disagreement. This controversy is rooted in the traditional separation of the biophysical and socio-economic dimensions of desertification, which have been studied separately by scientists from both the natural and the social sciences. This separation has been fueled by the lack of a conceptual and synthethic framework suited to deal with both dimensions simultaneously. In this article we review the main topics surrounding desertification, introduce a new conceptual framework designed to study the biophysical and socio-economic dimensions of desertification simultaneously, review some of the measures being carried out to manage desertified lands and discuss some of the main challenges ahead in the research and management arenas.