By Ramesh Jaura Courtesy IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
BERLIN (IDN) – The United Nations' top official in-charge of combating desertification has called upon world leaders to "put a cap on land degradation" that has already adversely affected 40 percent of the world's agricultural land with dire consequences for the poorest of the poor.
"Just 6-10 inches of top soil stand between us and extinction," says UNCCD Executive Secretary Luc Gnacadja, adding: "Productive land is a finite resource like our oceans and forests." And yet every year some 12 million hectares of land are being lost to degradation.
Gnacadja was briefing the press ahead of the special UN High-level meeting in New York on September 20, 2011.
"We should work towards a land degradation neutral world through a target of zero net land degradation. The first priority is to prevent degradation. Where the land has already been degraded, we should reclaim and rehabilitate an equivalent area of land as an offset," he said in Bonn, the seat of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
The "historic meeting" to take place at the UN Headquarters will offer an opportunity for world leaders to provide political impetus and guidance for a sustained global response to the world's desertification/land degradation challenges, Gnacadja said.
It will provide a unique opportunity to raise awareness on the global land degradation threat and the urgent need for stronger action to implement the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, he added.
Rio+20
According to an advance copy of the background paper by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the High-Level meeting will focus on: "How can Rio Plus 20 foster the measurability of the implementation of the UNCCD by means of quantitative target setting for action at all levels? How the international community can act at global level to achieve zero net global land degradation as a global target for sustainable development through means of prevention as well as land rehabilitation and reclamation?"
Rio+20 will mark the 20th anniversary of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Earth Summit, in Rio de Janeiro, and the 10th anniversary of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg.
UNCCD emerged from the Earth Summit along with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). UNCCD was adopted in Paris on June 17, 1994.
The UNCCD Executive Secretary said: "There is a vaccine for the disease of land degradation. It has already been tried and tested. Now we need to roll it out worldwide. We need to invest heavily in sustainable land management globally."
"The vaccine is being used in parts of south east Asia through agroforestry schemes, in Queensland, Australia through drought management programmes, and in Africa where Evergreen Agricultural systems have been adopted on more than six million hectares. However in many areas it is not happening fast enough," he stressed.
Forgotten Billion
Gnacadja warned: "We are only four years away from the Millennium Development Goal to eradicate poverty. But poverty persists in areas affected by desertification. More than a billion people are the victims of this. But it is not just the billion directly affected. We are all at risk. Yet there is gross underinvestment in these regions largely due to misperception."
"The remote location of drylands, political marginalization and associated lack of infrastructure have partly led to a limited access to markets, education and health facilities," he added.
In 2010, the UNCCD and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) conducted a study titled, The Forgotten Billion, which examined the spread of poverty across different ecosystems, as one moves from areas with more natural resource endowments to those with less. The study found that poverty increases with aridity. In particular, female adult literacy and child mortality increase as you move from the sub-humid to the semi-arid to the arid regions.
And yet, some of the world’s primary cereal producing regions are located in the semi-arid areas; North America's Great Plains, the Pampas in Argentina, the wheat belts of the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
A Priority National Policy Issue
It is with this in view that UN General Assembly's Resolution 65/160, distributed on March 4, 2011, expresses concern over the increasing vulnerability of poor communities in the arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas in Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia, Northern Mediterranean and Central and Eastern European regions.
It notes that the 10-year (2008-2011) strategic plan and framework for the implementation of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification is not being fully implemented in these regions. The resolution also notes the negative economic impacts of desertification, land degradation and drought on the affected populations.
Gnacadja said governments need to raise this as a priority national policy issue.
Aware of the significance of these issues, the UNCCD is focusing on the drylands, which cover 41 percent of the Earth and are inhabited by over 2 billion people. Drylands account for 44 percent of the world’s cultivated ecosystems and have provided 30 percent of all the world's cultivated plants. However, up to one fifth of the surface area is steadily degrading.
Looking ahead to the tenth Session of the Parties to the Convention which begins on October 10, 2011 in Changwon, South Korea, the UNCCD Executive Secretary urged Parties to continue rapid progress on strengthening the scientific basis of the Convention. He also called for major progress towards meeting the objectives of the UNCCD 10 year strategy (2008-2018) and a clear plan to rapidly integrate National Action Programmes into national policies for poverty alleviation and sustainable development.
After all, neither desertification, nor land degradation, nor droughts are God Given. They are triggered by human activities and climate change much of which is influenced by human beings.
A widespread but misguided belief is that drylands are waste lands or marginal lands with low productivity and low adaptive capacity where poverty is inevitable, contribute little to national prosperity and yield no good return on investments.
The fact is rather that drylands comprise one-third of the world land mass and population, 44 percent of the global food production system, and 50 percent of the world's livestock. In addition, dry forests are home to the world's largest diversity of mammals whose survival, literally, hangs on the arid zone forests.
Traditional wisdom has it that dire consequences result from continuously ignoring repeated cries for help by what multiple communities across the globe call 'Mother Earth: "Feed me to feed you". If not handled with care, land suffers from utter degradation and becomes acutely vulnerable to desertification that does not allow even a blade of grass to grow. [IDN-InDepthNews - September 13, 2011]
