Ecobreves – VENEZUELA: Eye on Desertification

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

CARACAS, Jun 23 2008 (IPS) - The Venezuelan government has launched a plan to fight desertification, which begins with a diagnosis and description of each of its 24 regions. The aim is “to detail information about geology, topography, climate, hydrology, soils, biodiversity, socio-economic status, population and estimates of desertified area,” said Saida Rivero, head of soils at the Environment Ministry.

So far, the ministry has tagged four percent of Venezuela's 916,000 square kilometers as desert scrub, prickly forest and very arid tropical forest. “But the study is necessary because desertification could surpass 10 percent of national territory, especially in the northwest and northeast,” Alfredo Morales, of the environmental group La Tortuga, told Tierramérica.

According to Vitalis, another environmental organization, in this decade the destruction of forested area exceeds 200,000 hectares a year.