ENVIRONMENT: Desertification Overshadowed By ‘Sexier’ Issues

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RECIFE, Brazil, Nov 25 1999 (IPS) - The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro produced three conventions on the environment, resulting in greater protection for biodiversity and reduced “greenhouse” gas emissions, but wealthy nations seem to have forgotten the problem of desertification, say international experts.

Each year, the desertification phenomenon results in losses of 42 billion dollars and 10 million hectares of fertile land worldwide, affecting 30 percent of the earth’s land surface, said Hama Arba Diallo, executive secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

Desertification directly threatens one billion people around the world, and will force one third of them from their land and into “environmental exile,” he said.

Delegates from around the world are meeting at the Third Conference of the Parties (COP-3) to the UNCCD in Recife, in northeastern Brazil, where they are debating strategies for raising global awareness on the desertification issue. The two- week meeting ends Friday.

Climate change from ozone depletion threatens all countries, rich or poor, and biodiversity is a seductive issue because of its profit potential, but desertification has no immediate attraction for international donors, affirmed Heitor Matallo Junior, co- ordinator of Brazil’s anti-desertification Action Plan.

Desertification “cannot be left behind – we want this convention to have the same status as the other two,” declared Abdoulaye Bathily, delegate from Senegal.

National legislators from around the world, meeting in their own parallel forum, condemned the different treatment of the desertification convention, especially by wealthy countries, compared to the biodiversity and climatic change conventions – the more “popular” environmental issues.

But in practice, “they are treated differently, given unequal weight, because desertification is a problem of the poor,” lamented Brazilian Fernando Ferro. He pointed out, however, that “prejudice and contempt” are also manifest within countries against their own areas affected by desertification.

The parliamentarians criticised the United States for not ratifying the UNCCD, and therefore avoiding commitments and financial contributions to nations who are losing their fertile lands.

The legislators committed to implementing debt-for-investment exchanges in the fight against erosion and desertification, and providing funds to poor nations to help them effectively confront the phenomenon.

It is difficult to obtain new money from donors because the issue is “an old problem,” and wealthy countries argue they have been providing funds for many years, says Takao Shibata, assistant president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

IFAD has not received the three million dollars it needs for adminstrative expenses as co-ordinator of the Global Mechanism, an office created to mobilise and channel funds toward executing the anti-desertification action plans in poor countries.

Unfortunately, the mechanism “has not lived up to our expectations,” commented Hudson Gabaitse, minister of Agriculture in Botswana, one of the African countries facing acute desertification problems.

In several speeches during the conference, European representatives insisted that they have expanded their anti- desertification contributions, “beginning even before the convention was approved.”

Germany has done so “since the mid-1980s” and more than 60 percent of its current bilateral projects on the issue – a total of 575 million dollars – are earmarked for Africa, reported the director general of the German ministry of economic co-operation, Hans-Dietrich Lehmann.

“Combatting desertification means reducing poverty,” Lehmann declared.

There is already “substantial implicit support for this convention” in ongoing co-operation and in aid relations with affected countries, maintained the British delegation, an attitude seconded by the representatives from Japan, France and Finland.

The investment necessary to contain the desertification process and recover arable lands is difficult to calculate, but ranges from 10 billion to 22 billion dollars annually over the next two decades, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The effects of the phenomenon are worst in Africa, where 65 percent of agricultural lands are degraded, said Klaus Toepfer, UNEP executive director.

The UNCCD has strong ethical and social foundations. “It is the only convention that puts poor people in the first point on the agenda for development and the environment,” pointed out Edward Lowassa, Tanzania’s state minister.

Brazil’s environmental minister also emphasised the UNCCD’s “human side” because it involves a vivid and visible problem that “does not need scientific verification or 150 years to feel the effects,” he said, in reference to the global warming issue.