© Environment News Service (ENS) 2000
November 10, 2000

BANGKOK, Thailand, November 10, 2000 (ENS) - The world can no longer afford to ignore the crisis in Asia's dry lands, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said today.

According to UNEP's Global Environmental Outlook 2000 report, half of all land in South Asia has lost agricultural potential because of poor agricultural practices, deforestation, overgrazing and climate change.

Degraded areas include the sand dunes of Syria, the steeply eroded mountain slopes of Nepal, and the deforested and overgrazed highlands of Laos.

The result, said UNEP, is desertification. Dramatic examples of this can also be seen in the encroachment of desert in Western China, India and Pakistan, and dust problems in the two Koreas and Japan, said the organization.

The Earth is covered by a fragile layer of soil which forms slowly, but can be blown and washed away in a few seasons. When this process can no longer be compensated for by nature's inherent ability to recover, desertification follows.

Desertification strips susceptible areas of their productive capacity and often leads to food shortages and poverty.

Asia is home to 60 percent of the world's population, who depend of 30 percent of its land area. Three quarters of the world's poor live in the region and two thirds of its inhabitants are rural dwellers.

UNEP executive director Klaus Toepfer believes that both poor and wealthy economies are to blame for desertification in the region. "Those left out of the development process are forced to make a living from marginal lands, while the lifestyles of the better off are exploiting weaker countries' resource bases and driving unsustainable industrial farming and forestry practices," said Toepfer.

"It is important to recognize that behind the razzmatazz of consumerism, we all remain dependent on basic natural resources - land, air, water and biodiversity - for every product and service. There can be no free lunch on the environment."

UNEP urged international donors and development agencies to support projects that tackle desertification and drought. Representatives from 31 Asian countries meeting in Bangkok this week to discuss the problem heard precious few examples of success stories.

The countries are signatories to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), set up six years ago to tackle the spread of deserts. Their progress will be reviewed at the Fourth Conference of Parties to the Convention in Germany next month.

Currently, National Action Programs are being formulated and launched in China, Iran, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Mongolia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Uzbekistan and Yemen. In China, combating dryland degradation is a long term goal.

Some 27 percent of the country's land area is affected, and each year more than 2,500 additional square kilometers become desertified. Nearly 400 million people live in these areas and the economic loss to China has been estimated at US$6.5 billion a year.

China's National Action Program was adopted in 1994 and has been integrated into the country's National Economic and Social Development Plan. A new research center, monitoring center, and series of desertification maps have been developed to support the program.

Toepfer said progress in implementing the UNCCD had been too slow. All parties involved in rural development must join, mobilize funding, integrate programs and tackle the root causes of dry land degradation, he said.

"The policy response to the challenge is one of the most complex we face. Degradation of agricultural soil is linked to poverty, stalled rural development and the rapidly globalizing economy."

Technical and educational support is urgently needed in rural communities, particularly among women, to enable them to participate in economic activity and maintain a healthy environment, he added.

Under Toepfer's leadership, UNEP has emphasized the link between environmental conventions - climate change, desertification and biological diversity - and the need to integrate environmental concerns with trade policy and the mainstream development.

The problem is not confined to Asia. In September, UNCCD warned that considerable areas of land bordering the Mediterranean will be lost to desertification within 50 to 75 years. It based its "tentative" estimates on current rates of erosion brought on by climate change, land use changes and other human activities.

A Desertification Information System has been set up by UNCCD, the European Environment Agency and the Italian Foundation for Applied Meteorology to try to reverse the trend. The system will involve all nations of the Mediterranean basin, as well as scientists and specialized institutions in sharing information on desertification.

It will try to create a common information system so as to avoid duplication and help Mediterranean governments create more effective programs to deal with the problem.

Some of the programs already in place try to address local needs. That can mean introducing drought resistant crops, diversifying energy sources away from the uncontrolled gathering of fuelwood, promoting research and creating drought contingency plans. Error: Unable to read footer file.