adminTHE United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) was launched at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The Convention was adopted in Paris on June 17, 1994 and entered into force in December 1996. It is the first and only internationally legally binding framework set up to address the problem of desertification.
The Convention is based on the principles of participation, partnership and decentralisation — the backbone of good governance. There are now 195 countries that are party to the Convention.
UNCCD COP 11
In mid-September from the 16th-27th of this year, close to 3 000 delegates attended the 11th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP 11).
The conference was held in Windhoek, Namibia, under the theme: “A Stronger UNCCD for a Land Degradation Neutral World.”
Delegates from the 195 member parties to the UNCCD, United Nations organisations, intergovernmental and civil society organisations came together to debate and arrive at solutions towards improving the living conditions of people in dry lands; maintaining and restoring land and soil productivity; and mitigating the effects of drought.
What is Desertification?
Desertification is a process where fertile land is transformed into a desert typically as a result of deforestation, drought or improper/inappropriate agriculture and it is a phenomenon that ranks among the greatest environmental challenges of our time.
Desertification is the development of desert-like conditions in regions that have mainly experienced human disturbance such as deforestation, overgrazing, or poorly managed agriculture. Although the extent of the world’s deserts expand and contract in response to natural changes in climatic conditions, desertification is a phenomenon significantly induced by human activities. Land alteration often brings with it modification of local climatic conditions.
The Convention defines the term desertification as “land degradation in arid, semi-arid and sub-humid areas resulting from various factors including climatic variations and human activities”. Desertification is a dynamic process that is observed in dry and fragile ecosystems. It affects terrestrial areas (topsoil, earth, groundwater reserves, surface run-off, animal and plant populations, as well as human settlements and their amenities (for instance, terraces and dams).
Although desertification can include the encroachment of sand dunes on land, it doesn’t refer to the advance of deserts.
Rather, it is the persistent degradation of dry land ecosystems by human activities — including unsustainable farming, mining, overgrazing and clear-cutting of land — and by climate change.
Is desertification a global problem?
Desertification is a worldwide problem directly affecting 250 million people and a third of the earth’s land surface or over four billion hectares. In addition, the livelihoods of some one billion people who depend on land for most of their needs and usually the world’s poorest in over one hundred countries are threatened.
Though desertification affects Africa the most, where two-thirds of the continent is desert or drylands, it is not a problem confined to drylands in Africa.
- Over 30 percent of the land in the United States is affected by desertification.
- One quarter of Latin America and the Caribbean is deserts and drylands.
- In Spain, one fifth of the land is at risk of turning into deserts.
Why is it important to fight desertification?
Desertification is at the root of political and socio-economic problems and poses a threat to the environmental equilibrium in affected regions. It leads to loss of productivity, which exacerbates poverty in the drylands forcing farmers to seek a way of living in more fertile lands or cities.
In fact, 60 million people are expected to eventually move from the desertified areas in Sub-Saharan Africa towards northern Africa and Europe in the next 20 years. Half of the 50 armed conflicts in 1994 had environmental causal factors characteristic of the drylands.
- Desertification also has grave natural consequences. It makes land areas flood-prone, causes soil salinisation, results in the deterioration of the quality of water, silting of rivers, streams and reservoirs.
- Unsustainable irrigation practices can dry the rivers that feed large lakes; the Aral Sea and Lake Chad have both seen their shorelines shrink dramatically in this way.
- Land degradation is also a leading source of land-based pollution for the oceans, as polluted sediment and water washes down major rivers.
- On a global basis, droughts are likely to occur more frequently and with a higher intensity, with increasing levels of land degradation and Sub-Saharan Africa will be one of the worst affected regions.
- More than half of all agricultural land globally is affected by desertification and this is growing at a rapid rate. In 1991 just 15 percent of the earth’s total land area was classified as “degraded”; in 2011 this figure had shot up to 25 percent.
How can it be prevented?
Practical measures that should be undertaken to prevent and restore degraded land include:
- Reducing the cutting down of trees;
- Instituting afforestation and reforestation programmes;
- Curbing the starting of uncontrolled fires;
- Engaging in sustainable agricultural practices;
- Practising narrow strip planting, windbreaks and shelter-belts of live plants;
- Engaging in agroforestry;
Because poverty forces people who depend on land for their livelihoods to over-exploit it for food, energy, housing and as a source of income, desertification is thus both the cause and consequence of poverty.
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