ENVIRONMENT: UN Conference Urges Anti-Desertification Action

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava and Carlos Castilho

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 16 1999 (IPS) - The drought in Brazil’s impoverished northeast is no longer an annual phenomenon, it has apparently become a permanent situation and is turning the region into a desert – a process mirrored to some degree on all of the earth’s continents.

Some 3,000 delegates from 159 countries and international organisations have gathered in Recife, the capital of Brazil’s northeastern state of Pernambuco, to take part in the Third Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

The meeting was opened this week by Marco Maciel, Brazil’s vice- president, a political leader from Pernambuco, where several areas are becoming deserts.

Environment Ministers from more than 50 countries, officials from international organisations, parliamentarians, experts and journalists from around the world are taking part in the two-week conference.

Recife was chosen to host this third period of sessions of the Third Conference of Parties (COP3) of the UNCCD for its location in Brazil’s most threatened region, where 17 million people live on semi-arid lands.

But the Conference will focus on the desertification of Africa, the continent most affected by the problem. Participants will discuss reports from 39 countries and four regional organisations from the region.

The 39 countries, which represent 75 percent of Africa’s territory, suffer the effects of desertification, such as loss of farmlands and the resulting conflicts, human migratory movements, and the deepening of poverty, reported Hama Arba Diallo, executive secretary of the UNCCD.

To halt or reduce the process, the region’s governments have implemented national action programmes and created organisations to promote the application of Convention policies.

African authorities point to the lack of financial and technical assistance from the nations of the industrialised North as a limiting factor in their fight. The perverse reality is that the worst desertification processes are found on the world’s poorest, least developed continent.

But this type of land degradation is an issue on all continents, affecting nearly one billion people in 110 countries and 70 percent of the earth’s arid lands used for agriculture.

The poor management of soils and water resources, logging, and other unsustainable human activities threaten to trigger the uncontrollable spread of deserts, endangering the lives of millions of people, forcing them to seek a better fate elsewhere.

In Brazil, eight of the nine northeastern states contain areas that have already turned to desert or are considered drylands, and they continue expanding.

A severe drought that has lasted since early 1998 has created emergency situations for local residents, forcing the region’s officials to turn to the federal government for help to prevent starvation.

In Paraiba state, no rain was recorded during this year’s rainy season. Some 87 percent of the state’s municipalities have no water, leading the government to declare the state a disaster area.

Last year, Paraiba recorded just 136 millimetres of rain (its normal rainfall is 500 mm per year), the equivalent of the average monthly rainfall in the rest of the country. In 80 percent of the northeastern states’ territory, family farmers faced losses reaching 90 percent.

The region has suffered food shortages for the last two years, with serious consequences for public health. Infant diarrhea, a result of malnutrition, caused 77 percent of deaths reported for children under age five.

Infant mortality rates jumped as high as 85.7 per 1,000 births in drought-stricken areas, compared to Brazil’s national average of 40 deaths per 1,000.

The immediate result of the drought is the desertification of Ceará, Piauí, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraiba, Pernambuco, Sergipe, Alagoas, and part of Bahía states, a region that is home to more than 50 million people.

At the COP3 in Recife, delegates also take on administrative issues, such as the activities of the Global Mechanism, a body created to gather and channel funds to developing countries for fighting desertification.

The Mechanism functions under the International Fund for Agricultural Development, a UN agency dedicated to assisting the poor rural people around the world.

Early warning systems for climatic disasters, soil degradation indicators and ecosystem management for dry lands are some of the conference’s other themes.

In parallel meetings, some 60 parliamentarians from around the world will discuss possible legislative contributions to the Convention.

Some 300 Brazilian non-governmental organisations are also gathering to create a civil society forum to share experiences and find solutions for living with the drought in northeastern Brazil.