Conserving land and water = Securing our common future

For the millions of people who live in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas, the effects of desertification can lead to extreme hardship – and can often cause serious conflicts over land and water. In fact, desertification ranks among the greatest environmental challenges of our times.

To focus the world’s attention on this growing problem, the World Day to Combat Desertification has been observed every 17 June since 1995, the same year that the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) was implemented. By 2005, 191 governments around the world had signed the UNCCD, which promotes effective action through innovative programmes and supportive international partnerships.

This year’s theme, ‘Conserving land and water = Securing our common future’, highlights how the threats unleashed by desertification, land degradation and drought constitute a peril to the future of the entire human race.

“This triple threat deprives people of their basic human rights such as the right to food and water,” said Sheila Mwanundu, Senior Technical Adviser, Environment at IFAD. “In worst-case scenarios, people are forced to leave their homes in search of these basic requirements for survival. This in turn can trigger conflict, undermining local, regional, national and even international security.”

And because desertification diminishes biological diversity, it also contributes to global climate change, when the atmosphere carbon stored in dryland vegetation and soils is released into the atmosphere.

According to the UNCCD, more than 250 million people are directly affected by land degradation and drought, and about 1 billion people in more than 100 countries are at risk.

“For these people, who are among the world‘s poorest, most marginalized and politically disadvantaged citizens, desertification and climate change can be life-or-death issues,” said Mwanundu. “But we all depend on clean water and healthy, productive land. That is why desertification should be a matter of concern to everyone on our planet.”

A multitude of causes
Thirty per cent of the Earth’s land surface is affected by the degradation of fragile drylands. Nearly half the world’s poor people live in dry and marginalized lands.

Desertification is a complicated issue. It is not simply the advance of deserts, though it can include the encroachment of sand dunes on land. Rather, it is the persistent degradation of dryland ecosystems, caused in part by climatic variations, such as rising temperatures and prolonged periods of drought.

But desertification is very often caused by unsustainable human activity, such as overcultivation, overgrazing, deforestation, and poor irrigation – and therefore can be prevented or controlled by human effort.

And there are usually deeper, underlying causes that leave people in dryland areas with few, if any, alternatives to carrying out activities that have devastating results on their environment.

“The principal cause is poverty,” said Mwanundu. “Poverty forces poor rural people to resort to short-term, unsustainable solutions to feed, clothe and educate their families, even if they run the risk of endangering their long-term futures.”

Ill-conceived agricultural practices, traditional or intensified, only make things worse as poor populations have no choice but to adopt short term-survival methods putting more pressure on increasingly scarce local resources. Climate change is increasing that pressure, and exacerbating droughts.

That is why about 70 per cent of IFAD-supported programmes and projects are located in ecologically fragile and marginal environments. IFAD works with poor people to turn these arid areas into productive agricultural regions and show that dry lands do not have to be wastelands. All IFAD-supported programmes and projects are screened for potential adverse effects on the environment, natural resources and local populations.

“Addressing the relationships between the environment and poverty, as well as managing land and water to deliver pro-poor benefits should be part of poverty reduction strategies.”

Finding solutions through strong partnerships
IFAD is an active partner in the UNCCD, which strongly emphasizes the role of participation, gender-equity, partnerships, integrated sustainable development, community empowerment, local expertise and traditional knowledge in combating desertification.

IFAD also hosts a number of organizations that focus on sustainable land and water management, including the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the Global Mechanism, and the secretariat of the International Land Coalition.

GEF is an independent financial organization established in 1991 to provide grants to developing countries for projects that have global environmental benefits and contribute to sustainable livelihoods. IFAD was selected as an executing agency of the GEF because of IFAD’s expertise in addressing land degradation, its recognition of the links between poverty and the environment, and its crucial role in the UNCCD.

The Global Mechanism is a subsidiary of the UNCCD, with a mandate to increase financing for sustainable land management. It is hosted at IFAD in recognition of IFAD’s focus on rural development, agriculture and sustainable land management.

The International Land Coalition is a global alliance of organizations dedicated to working with poor rural people to increase their secure access to natural resources, particularly land. It does this by building alliances between development partners, including NGOs, intergovernmental, governmental and civil society organizations.

As an agency of GEF and host of the Global Mechanism, IFAD has an important role in advancing the UNCCD agenda.