UN high-level meeting calls for 'stronger action' against desertification - Participants at a high-level UN meeting on Tuesday stressed the need for stronger action to protect the world’s dry lands, which are home to two billion people. They said doing so would help reduce poverty and improve development prospects.

According the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), more than 12 million hectares of productive land are lost due to desertification every year, the equivalent of losing an area the size of South Africa every decade.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who spoke at the meeting, one of several high-level events taking place on the margins of the 66th session of the UN General Assembly, said: 'Drought and land degradation must therefore move to the centre of policy development.

'By refocusing our development agenda to include the potential of dry lands, we can break the links between poverty and desertification, drought and land degradation.'

He also drew attention to the dry lands of the Horn of Africa, which are experiencing the most severe food crisis in the world, leaving more than 13 million people in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia in urgent need of humanitarian aid.

'Drought does not have to become famine. Too often the international community reacts too late.
Too often decisions are taken based on false economies. In the end, we count the cost not just in human lives but in the extra expense of responding to crises that could have been averted for a fraction of the price.

'The world’s dry lands are too often an investment desert – seen by governments and the international community as a lost cause. Nothing could be further from the truth,”
he said.

Also speaking, the President of the UN General Assembly, Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser,
said desertification is one of the most complex challenges today, with serious environmental, economic, political and social impacts that affect people, most of whom are poor.

'The economic, social and human cost of desertification is tremendous and I call upon the international community to take immediate and decisive action to address its impacts and to take measures for both its prevention and reversal,' he said.

He stressed the need for major innovative policy interventions and shifts in sustainable land management strategies to address the impacts of desertification, which must be done with the active engagement of all stakeholders and local communities.

'Effectively addressing desertification and land degradation can only be done in the context of other major global challenges, such as climate change, poverty eradication, food security, deforestation and biodiversity loss,” he added.

UNCCD Executive Secretary Luc Gnacadja told the meeting that this is the first time that the convention’s core issues are being taken up by such a high-level political gathering since its entry into force in 1996.

Established in 1994, UNCCD is the sole legally-binding international agreement linking environment, development and the promotion of healthy soils.

The convention’s 194 parties work to alleviate poverty in the dry lands, maintain and restore the land’s productivity and mitigate the effects of drought.

Pana 21/09/2011