The past two weeks have seen the fifteenth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) taking place in the Côte d’Ivoire capital. COP15 brought together leaders from governments, the private sector, civil society and other key stakeholders from around the world to drive progress in the future sustainable management of one of our most precious commodities: land.
The UNCCD is the UN body tasked with combatting drought, desertification and land degradation. It was established in 1994, and defines desertification as “land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities.”
Desertification is one of the most pressing environmental issues affecting the world today. Indeed, Luc Gnacadja, the former head of the UNCCD once said that “the top 20cm of soil is all that stands between us and extinction.” Not only does this soil store huge amounts of carbon, it is home to wildlife that underpins both food production and forest growth.
While desertification occurs around the world, Sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia are the areas most under threat. Indeed, between 25 and 30 per cent of the world’s surface is affected by desertification, putting at risk the livelihoods of more than 1.2 billion people. It is important to note that desertification does not just refer to the literal expansion of deserts, but the temporary or permanent decline in quality of soil, vegetation, water resources or wildlife.
The causes of desertification are complex and interlinked. Growing demand for food production can result in overgrazing and intensive farming which strips land of vegetation and nutrients. Deforestation has an effect too. Forests help generate rainfall, so cutting them down can increase the risk of drying the local climate. Another key factor is, of course, climate change. Warmer and drier seasons depletes the soil and increases wildfires which severely degrade landscapes. And it also leads to less rainfall, affecting water supply to vegetation and soils.
The UNCCD has set up a number of initiatives to tackle these issues. The Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) Target-Setting Programme unites more than 120 counties that are setting voluntary targets to achieve LDN, protect and restore land resources, build resilience of land-dependent communities and promote responsible land governance.
The Drought Initiative promotes a shift to proactive drought management, working with countries to develop national drought plans and developing an interactive Drought Toolbox that enables users to design custom drought solutions.
The Great Green Wall Initiative aims to restore Africa’s degraded landscapes and transform millions of lives with the ambition to restore 100 million ha of degraded land, sequester 250 million tons of carbon and create 10 million green jobs.
There are other initiatives too: African governments have pledged to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land by 2030 under the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative.
COP15 highlighted the urgency of the fight against land degradation. For example, in the host country, Côte d’Ivoire, 92 per cent of primary forests have been lost since it gained independence in 1960. Nearly 60 per cent of the land used to grow crops is affected by soil degradation.
“The world is approaching the point of no return in land degradation, desertification and deforestation, but we can reverse it if we act now,” Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara said at the opening of COP15.
This stark warning is reflected in UNCCD’s Drought in Numbers report, released last week. The report reveals that between 1970 and 2019, weather, climate and water hazards, accounted for 50 per cent of disasters and 45 per cent of disaster-related deaths, mostly in developing countries.
And while droughts represented 15 per cent of natural disasters, they accounted for 650,000 deaths. The financial losses of desertification and drought are also staggering: between 1998 and 2017, droughts were responsible for economic losses of $124 billion – a rise of 29 per cent since 2000.
And it is not just Africa and Central Asia suffering. The report states that, over the past century, 45 major drought events have also affected millions of people in Europe – affecting an average of 15 per cent of Europe’s land and 17 per cent of its population.
Key to preventing this situation from getting worse is land restoration. “One of the best, most comprehensive solutions is land restoration, which addresses many of the underlying factors of degraded water cycles and the loss of soil fertility,” said UNCCD Executive Secretary, Ibrahim Thiaw.
“We must build and rebuild our landscapes better, mimicking nature wherever possible and creating functional ecological systems.”
It’s a rallying cry that is vital the world listens and reacts to: our future depends on it.