Living in desert, unfortunately (8)
I believe the answer is:
resident
'living' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'in desert unfortunately' is the wordplay.
'unfortunately' indicates anagramming the letters (a bad or unfortunate spelling).
'in'+'desert'='indesert'
'indesert' is an anagram of 'RESIDENT'.
(Other definitions for resident that I've seen before include "Occupier" , "One living in the place referred to" , "settled" , "Incumbent" , "Dwelling in a place for some time" .)