Money wrangle marks UN conference on desertification
2000 Agence France Presse
December 22, 2000
BONN, Dec 22 - A UN conference on desertification was winding up here on Friday after assessing national programmes to fight one of the world's most pressing environment challenges.
The fourth assessment of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification was overshadowed by a wrangle about funding, including appeals for the UNCCD to be given financial muscle to initiate projects rather than act as a coordinator and evaluator of them.
The UNCCD is one of a trio of major accords born from the 1992 Rio summit on the global environment, the other two covering climate and biodiversity.
However, these latter conventions each have mechanisms to fund projects, whereas the UNCCD has a tiny budget of just six million dollars, which is mainly used to pay for a small secretariat.
"This Convention needs a financial mechanism, like the one the international community has already provided for its sister conventions -- those on Climate Change and Biological Diversity -- and now also for the new Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants," UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said in a message.
"The people threatened by desertification are among the most vulnerable on this earth," he said.
"Preserving arid land as a source of food, and ensuring that those who live on it have access to safe drinking water, are formidable challenges.
"But the international community has both the technical and the financial means to rise to these challenges, if it has the will."
Soil erosion or loss of cultivated land to desert threatens 3.6 billion hectares (nine billion acres), nearly a quarter of the world's land surface, and home to more than a billion people.
Some experts predict desertification is likely to accelerate under global warming, as marginally arid lands become unsustainable for human life.
"At the beginning of the 21st century, we are seeing environmental changes occurring simultaneously and often interactively. They will affect us directly," said Roberto Bertollini, Director of the Division of Technical Support and Strategic Development at the World Health Organisation's Europe office.
"The process of desertification and land degradation is happening at the same time as altered composition of the atmosphere, depletion of terrestrial aquifers and ocean fisheries and loss of biodiversity.
"The impact of these trends on health will become apparent during the coming decades."