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ENVIRONMENT: Nations Press for Funds to Fight Desertification

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Aug 27 2003 (IPS) - Financial backing for countries with established strategies for fighting the loss of fertile soil, a process threatening a third of the Earth’s land surface, would be a major achievement of the international conference on desertification taking place in the Cuban capital.

The Sixth Conference of Parties (COP6) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is underway in Havana, and will last through Sep. 5, and will bring together 20 heads of state and of government Monday in a roundtable discussion.

The national leaders are to debate the UNCCD means for achieving the Millennium Development Goals related to food security and poverty eradication, as established by the U.N. General Assembly in 2000.

Some 70 nations – from Africa, Asia and Latin America – have established conditions for confronting the impacts of desertification and water shortages through national programmes, and are ready to receive aid, says Hama Arba Diallo, UNCCD executive secretary.

Diallo, of Burkina Fasso, stressed that the time has come for action, and that the problems “can no longer wait for us.” As many as 100 million hectares of fertile land are lost each year to desertification processes, he said.

Lack of action is also costing 42 billion dollars in material losses annually, said the U.N. official. The focus of the conference’s debate could be those countries that are “eligible for immediate support from the international community,” said Diallo.

More than 4.0 billion hectares are currently threatened by desertification, while the subsistence of 1.2 billion people in 110 countries depends on farmland, and they tend to be among the world’s poorest populations, according to figures provided by the conference organisers.

“Desertification is not the natural expansion of existing deserts but the degradation of land in arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas,” states the UNCCD web site.

Participants in the Regional Meeting discussions insisted on the Global Environment Facility (GEF) of the World Bank as a mechanism to financially support plans for mitigating soil degradation and the impacts of drought.

COP6 is expected to give the green light to a GEF programme dedicated to financing anti-desertification projects, which could begin operations as soon as October.

The GEF is a multibillion-dollar mechanism for international financing comprising 175 countries and fomenting cooperation and resources to protect the world environment.

UNCCD experts say that 20 billion dollars is needed annually to fight desertification worldwide.

Diallo urged the participants to focus on utilising existing mechanisms to carry out measures for resolving the priority problems.

The rural sector, which is hardest hit by the impacts of desertification and drought, is nevertheless the area that has seen financing cut most in the past 25 years.

In comments to the press, Diallo wondered how rural poverty can be abated if the bulk of the resources are channelled towards other activities?

Desertification is a gradual process of “soil productivity loss and the thinning out of the vegetative cover because of human activities and climatic variations such as prolonged droughts and floods,” according to the UNCCD.

Human actions that contribute to desertification include overcultivation, overgrazing of livestock, deforestation, and poor irrigation practices. “Such overexploitation is generally caused by economic and social pressure, ignorance, war, and drought.”

Desertification directly affects more than 250 million people worldwide.

Experts point out that the phenomenon is both a cause and effect of poverty, because it forces those who make their living from the earth to overexploit the resource to obtain food, energy, housing and income, continuing the cycle of soil depletion.

According to the World Summit on Sustainable Development, held last year in South Africa, the Conference to Combat Desertification is a crucial instrument for fighting poverty in arid rural regions.

In Havana, the delegates at COP6 are to decide on measures aimed at achieving the U.N. Millennium Goal of halving the number of poor people in the world by 2015, based on 1990 figures.

“We can’t fight poverty without resolving the issue of soil fertility, the basic source of food and income for rural populations,” Antonio Perera, an expert with the U.N. Development Programme, told IPS.

Although desertification affects Africa most – two thirds of the territory is desert or arid land – the problem is not limited to that continent, and affects even the nations of the industrialised North.

More than 30 percent of the United States is considered degraded land, and 31 percent of Spain’s territory suffers the same fate.

A quarter of Latin America and Caribbean territory is desert or arid land.

The UNCCD, in force since 1996, has 188 member states and is the only international legal instrument covering desertification and drought issues.

Taking part in the Havana meet are ministers and deputy ministers from 115 countries, 80 lawmakers, 40 intellectuals and artists and representatives from more than 100 non-governmental organisations.