Perilous Times and Climate Change
UN fights to save the planet from ever-expanding deserts
by Staff Writers
Fortaleza, Brazil (AFP) Aug 17, 2010
The United Nations Monday launched a campaign to save the planet from
deserts that are threatening a third of the planet along with the
livelihoods of more than a billion people.
The decade-long initiative aims to "reverse and prevent
desertification" and to soften the effects of drought in affected areas
"to support poverty reduction and environmental sustainability," Luc
Gnacadja, the executive secretary of the UN Convention to Combat
Desertification, said.
Parched land and deserts today are home to one in three people on
Earth, or 2.1 billion people, 90 percent of whom are in developing
nations. One billion people struggle to find enough food to survive in
such inhospitable terrain.
According to the UN, such land accounts for 40 percent of the planet's
land surface, and supports a third of all crops and half of all
livestock.
The proportions of the problem require a global response, UN chief Ban
Ki-moon said.
"More than two billion people live in the world's drylands. The vast
majority live on less than one dollar a day and without adequate access
to freshwater," he said.
An area the size of Greece, or of Nepal, is lost every year to
desertification and soil erosion, the world body said, equivalent to 42
billion dollars in annual income.
Climate change is seen as the main cause of the phenonemon, a view
reinforced by droughts and flooding in different areas of unusual
intensity.
Projections based on climate change suggest half the world's population
will be living in areas of badly limited water supplies by 2030,
according to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
By 2050, there could be three billion more mouths to feed on the
planet, adding to the need to rescue degraded drylands, it said.
Although the issue appeared insurmountable, encouraging progress has
been made in certain regions, the body said, greatly improving the
lives of people living there.
One such area was the Loja mountains in southern Ecuador, which was 80
percent eaten up by desertification. An ingenious program to plant
cactus there has stalled erosion and protected woodlice populations
which cycle nutrients into the soil.
Another is in Kenya, where rain-water management and changes to farm
techniques has helped stop endemic desertification.
"We only used to hear of such projects, but now I am growing my own
sorghum. At least I don't have to beg for food all the time," one
farmer, Lotira Nyadit, was quoted as saying by the UNCCD.
The campaign of the Decade for Deserts and the Fight against
Desertification was launched in the northern Brazilian city of
Fortaleza, during a UN climate conference that was also preparing a
2012 UN meeting in Rio on the environment and development.