United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)
LAND degradation and desertification threaten the livelihoods of over 1 billion people in more than 110 countries - the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is a global response to this shared problem.
The (UNCCD) was established as a result of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, in 1992 and is the first international treaty to recognize the linkages between poverty and environmental degradation and to emphasize the need for an integrated approach to natural resource management and rural development.
The UNCCD is interpreted as a Multilateral Environmental Agreement (MEA) with specific contributions to make overarching development frameworks such as poverty reduction strategies.
It now has 192 country Parties to the Convention, making it global in reach. UNCCD focuses on six areas or regions: Africa, Asia, Latin America and Caribbean, Northern Mediterranean, Central and Eastern Europe, and other affected countries.
Relevance
Because of the rising levels of the oceans and the impending flooding of large areas of the world’s surface, the importance of land to grow food has taken on a new significance.
The Convention defines “desertification” as the degradation of soils or more broadly, as the degradation of natural resources, namely: land, vegetation and water.
The UNCCD, which has maintained a somewhat low profile in the past, could find new impetus as a result of its backing in principle for urgent study of biochar, a technology that has the potential to slow down and possibly reverse catastrophic global warming and climate change.
Time will tell whether UNCCD can awaken from its slumber and start to make a difference.
Asia
Desertification takes many different forms across Asia. Out of a total land area of 4.3 billion hectares, Asia contains some 1.7 billion hectares of dry sub-humid, semi-arid, and arid land reaching from the Mediterranean coast to the shores of the Pacific.
Degraded areas include the steeply eroded mountain slopes of Nepal, and the deforested and overgrazed highlands of Laos. To be fully effective, activities to combat desertification and drought need to be carefully tailored to the particular circumstances and needs of each country.
Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Japan, Bangladesh, India, China, Korea, Laos, Singapore, Vietnam, Myanmar and the Philippines are all members of UNCCD.
Secretariat
The permanent Secretariat of the UNCCD is based in the shiny new UN campus in Bonn, Germany. UNCCD activities are coordinated with the secretariats of other relevant international bodies and conventions, particularly with UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
History
The international community had long recognized that desertification was a major economic, social and environmental problem of concern to many countries in all regions of the world.
In 1977, the United Nations Conference on Desertification adopted a Plan of Action to Combat Desertification. Unfortunately, despite this and other efforts, the United Nations Environment Programme concluded in 1991 that the problem of land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas had intensified, although there were “local examples of success”.
As a result, the question of how to tackle desertification was still a major concern for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, which was held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
The Conference supported a new, integrated approach to the problem, emphasizing action to promote sustainable development at the community level. It also called on the United Nations General Assembly to establish an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to prepare, by June 1994, a Convention to Combat Desertification, particularly in Africa. In December 1992, the General Assembly agreed and adopted resolution 47/188.
Working to a tight schedule, the Committee completed its negotiations in five sessions. The Convention was adopted in Paris on 17 June 1994 and opened for signature there on 14-15 October 1994. It entered into force on 26 December 1996, 90 days after the fiftieth ratification was received. Over 179 countries were Parties as at March 2002.
The Conference of the Parties (COP), which is the Convention’s supreme governing body, held its first session in October 1997 in Rome, Italy; the second in December 1998 in Dakar, Senegal; the third in November 1999 in Recife, Brazil; the fourth in December 2000 in Bonn, Germany; and the fifth in October 2001 in Geneva, Switzerland. As of 2001, COP sessions will be held on a biennial basis.
Click on UNCCD to go to their official website.
________________________________________________________________