WORLD "LOSING GROUND" TO DESERTIFICATION, EXPERTS SAY
United Nations Launches Effort to Focus Attention On Desertification as among Most Serious Environmental Problems
GENEVA, 14 June 1995 (UN Information Service) - The world is literally "losing ground" in its struggle against desertification, or land degradation, caused by a combination of climate variations, over-grazing and over-cropping, bad irrigation and deforestation, that could threaten more than a billion people-nearly a fifth of the world's population.
As part of its campaign to combat desertification, the United Nations General Assembly has designated 17 June 1995 as the first "World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought." This day marks the first anniversary of the signing of the Convention to Combat Desertification in Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, on 17 June 1994 in Paris.
According to the definition agreed to by world leaders at the 1992 Earth Summit and adopted by the Convention, desertification is "land degradation in arid, semi-arid and sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climate variations and human activities."
In recognition of the seriousness of the problem of desertification, the Interim Secretariat for the Convention to Combat Desertification in Geneva has commissioned the preparation of "Down to Earth: A simple guide to the Convention to Combat Desertification, why it is necessary and what is important and different about it."
The 32-page report, which provides new information on the issues and strategies for combating desertification, has been prepared by the Center for Our Common Future in Bellevue, Switzerland, in collaboration with the secretariat.
According to new data in the report, the scope of the global problem is staggering:
Of the world's 5.2 billion hectares of useful dryland for agriculture, 69 percent-or an area equivalent to one quarter of the earth's land surface- has already suffered erosion and soil degradation.
More than 100 countries are affected. The problem is most severe in Africa, Asia and Latin America, although vast areas of southern Europe and North America are also hard hit.
The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) estimates that desertification costs the world $42 billion a year in lost agricultural production and other costs of degradation. About one quarter of that cost is felt in Africa alone.
Experts estimate that in the last two decades, as much topsoil has been lost around the world as covers the entire cropland of the United States.
The human cost is staggering: experts estimate that more than 1 billion people-almost a fifth of world population-are now at risk. Some 135 million people may be in danger of being driven from their land.
Just more than a million hectares of Africa, or 73 per cent of its drylands, are moderately or severely affected. Another 1.4 million hectares are affected in Asia. North America, however, is the continent most severely affected, 74 per cent of its drylands degraded. In addition, five members of the European Union-France, Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal-also suffer from desertification.
According to "Down to Earth," the loss of agriculturally rich topsoil is a problem of global dimensions, but nowhere is this more acute than in the world's "drylands," or land most suited for agricultural exploitation. These drylands cover more than one third of the world's land surface.
As land turns to dust and topsoil blows away, people are forced to flee to new areas where they can till their crops or graze their herds. Although it is currently impossible to determine exactly how many persons have actually fled the ravages of desertification, in countries such as Mali and Burkina Faso, one sixth of the population has been uprooted.
As a result, urban slums are swelling. According to "Down to Earth," the proportion of Mauritania's people living in the capital Nouakchott rose from 9 per cent to 41 per cent between 1956 and 1988, while the proportion living a nomadic existence fell from 73 per cent to 7 per cent during the same period.
Such migration has a global impact. As people abandon degraded land, they migrate to distant and often unfamiliar new cultures. According to "Down to Earth," desertification is one of the factors pushing immigrants from Mexico and other Central American countries to seek new homes and work in the United States. More people from the Bakel region of Senegal now live in France than in their home villages. Similar trends can be cited in other regions of the world. Land degradation also has an immediate, visible political impact. Desertification has played a role in igniting political and armed conflicts and has contributed to political instability, starvation and social breakdown in such trouble spots as Somalia.
The process of desertification amounts to something like a skin cancer. Small patches of degraded land emerge separately, sometimes divided by thousands of kilometers. Gradually, they spread and join into land areas with desert-like conditions. This process can be triggered or aggravated by drought, but results often from "human activities" such as over- cultivation which exhausts the soil, over-grazing which removes the covering of vegetation protecting the land from erosion, deforestation that removes trees binding the soil to the land and poor irrigation which turns croplands salty.
People, however, should not entirely be blamed for this process. The Convention recognizes that other factors are at play. Among them are poverty and the consequent exploitation of the land; marginalization of persons-especially women-living on drylands, which deprives people of their rights and influence in national or regional politics; over-demand for agricultural production; poor land management; and lack of proper attention to conservation. Women-already struggling because of their lack of power-are often the worst affected by desertification.
The Convention breaks new ground by adopting a "bottom-up" approach, insisting that local people must be fully involved in deciding how to tackle the problem and insisting that their poverty is addressed. According to "Down to Earth," this offers the hope that desertification can be halted and even rolled back, and that the incomes and self-respect of some of the poorest people can be improved, encouraging them to remain on the land. Thus, it offers the best, and possibly last chance, of effectively addressing the multiple, interlocking crises of desertification.
From the United Nations Department of Public Information.
