|
 Sixty million
people are expected to migrate from the desert areas of sub-Saharan Africa
to North Africa or Europe by the year 2020, the United Nations body
responsible for stemming the spread of deserts warned on Thursday. But when
they arrive they may find a drier Mediterranean region than the one that
exists today. Marking its 10th anniversary, the UN Convention to Combat
Desertification (UNCCD), took up the theme of the social dimensions of the
drying up of formerly fertile lands - migration and poverty. Since 1990, the
UN said, about six million hectares of productive land have been lost every
year around the world as the land becomes degraded and less fertile. The
World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought is commemorated each year on
June 17. It is part of a UN led international campaign to increase awareness
of land degradation.
With an
estimated 135 million people at risk of being driven from their lands
because of continuing desertification, the world must focus more on
reversing this trend, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a statement.
The Convention now has 191 signatories, and Annan says the governments of
member states must cooperate with civil society, business and international
organizations to promote more sustainable development so that land remains
arable and does not become desert. The secretary-general says
desertification can reduce productivity in some regions by as much as half.
“It contributes to food insecurity, famine and poverty, and can give rise to
social, economic and political tensions that can cause conflicts, further
poverty and land degradation,” Annan said. Creeping desertification,
particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, is inducing large migration movements as
locals who once farmed in what are now arid areas seek a living elsewhere.
The UNCCD
Secretariat estimates that more than one billion people and one-third of the
Earth’s surface are threatened by desertification.
 "It is
widely recognized that environmental degradation has a role to play in
considerations of national security as well as international stability.
Therefore, desertification has been seen as a threat to human security,"
says the Convention's Executive Secretary Hama Arba Diallo.
He agrees
with security experts gathered at a NATO workshop in Valencia, Spain last
December, who emphasized desertification in the Mediterranean region as an
issue of military security. In America, every year, between 700,000 and
900,000 Mexicans leave their rural dryland homes to find a living as migrant
workers in the United States, Diallo points out. Many villages have been
lost in China to expanding deserts, sand drifts, dune movement and
sandstorms in the last few decades.
From the
Central Qurnah marsh in Iraq, between 80,000 and 120,000 people are
estimated to have crossed the border into Iran, and another 200,000 are
thought to have dispersed throughout Iraq, becoming refugees in their own
country. In Haiti, as a result of land degradation which reduced the per
capita grain production to half what it was 40 years ago, compounded with
chronic political unrest, 1.3 million Haitians have fled their island over
the past two decades.
 Among
practical measures that can be taken to prevent and restore degraded land
are prevention of soil erosion; improved early warning system and water
resource management; and sustainable pasture, forest and livestock
management. Many techniques exist such as aero-seeding over shifting sand
dunes; narrow strip planting, windbreaks and shelterbelts of live plants;
agroforestry ecosystems; afforestation and reforestation; introduction of
new species and varieties with a capacity to tolerate salinity and dryness;
and environmentally sound human settlements. The Secretariat recognizes that
desertification is both the cause and consequence of poverty. Because
poverty forces the people who depend on land for their livelihoods to
overexploit the land for food, energy, housing and source of income, any
effective strategy must address poverty at its very center. Strategies must
take into account the social structures and land ownership of affected
people, the UN says, as well as pay proper attention to education, training
and communications in order to provide the fully integrated approach which
alone can effectively combat |
