ENVIRONMENT: U.N. Nears Convention to Combat Desertification

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 4 1996 (IPS) - It took four years, but the United Nations is finally preparing for a new convention to combat the effects of spreading deserts, which threaten the lives of some 900 million people in more than 100 countries.

“We are confident that the required 50 ratifications will soon be achieved,” says Hama Arba Diallo, executive secretary of the Interim Secretariat of the convention.

Initiated at the June 1992 U.N. Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, the Convention to Combat Desertification was adopted in Paris in June 1994. It has been signed by 115 countries and ratified by the national legislatures of 40 countries, 10 short of the 50 needed to make it an international legal document.

Bo Kjellen of Sweden, chairman of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC), told delegates Wednesday that he hoped the convention would enter into force by year’s end.

Anders Wijkman of the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) says his agency considers the convention “one of the most significant post-Rio frameworks for operationalising the concept of sustainable development, for alleviating poverty, and for ensuring food security for people living in the world’s drylands.”

The INC is holding a 10-day session in New York to decide on a permanent secretariat for the convention and a Global Mechanism to promote the generation of funds. Canada, Germany, and Spain are bidding to play host to the secretariat.

Describing the convention as a promising document, Carlos Medina of Honduras said that in the final analysis, it was “a package of dreams.”

“The realisation of the convention would be based on the goodwill of the rich countries and the capacity of the poor countries to make use of aid,” he noted. “The historical record is not so promising.”

Medina appealed to Western donors and international aid institutions to help the poorer countries — those with deserts as well as those, like Honduras, that have no deserts but are threatened with desertification.

A global coalition of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) last year launched the International Action Network for Desertification to help raise about 40 billion dollars towards activating of the convention.

At the UNCED meeting in Rio, Western donors pledged not only to provide “new and additional resources” to fund environmental projects but also gave assurances they would try to meet the U.N. target of 0.7 percent of GNP as official development assistance (ODA).

But the West has continued to renege on these pledges at several post-Rio meetings, including the Global Conference on the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States and the Commission on Sustainable Development.

The convention has a reference to the relevant chapters in the Rio environmental plan of action, Agenda 21, which call for increased financial resources.

Elizabeth Dowdeswell, Executive Director of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) argues that preventing and controlling desertification needs much more than money.

“Science and technology have a fundamental role to play in enabling improved and high-yielding varieties of crops, in preserving the unique drylands biodiversity, in clarifying the relationship between climate and desertification, and in improving the techniques to reduce energy demand and improve the retention and use of water,” she said.

Dowdeswell said UNEP allocates almost one-tenth of its budget to combatting desertification. “It is UNEP that has been the voice crying in the wilderness when it seemed that no one wanted to hear,” she told delegates.

According to UNEP, 81 developing countries will need to spend 800 million to 2.4 billion dollars a year on prevention, one to three billion dollars a year on corrective measures, and 2.4 to three billion dollars a year on rehabilitation. The United Nations estimates that over-cultivation and and over-grazing, combined with deforestation and poor irrigation, cost about 42 billion dollars a year in lost food production and other costs.

Although Africa and Asia are the most affected regions, some 74 percent of the drylands in the United States are severely or moderately affected, according to the United Nations. France, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal are also among countries experiencing desertification.

The United Nations defines desertification as “land degradation in arid, semi-arid, and dry, sub-humid areas, resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities.”