A mega UN summit to combat desertification is currently being hosted at Greater Noida. The summit which is the 14th meeting of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP 14) was kicked off on Monday, September 9.
Around 196 countries and 94 environment ministers have taken part in the program. All the countries are expected to announce their targets for land restoration and reach an agreement over measures to address emerging threats including sand and dust storms and droughts.
Inaugurating the conference, Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar expressed his faith in the efforts and said good outcomes were expected out of the COP 14. “If we take mitigation action on climate change, world will be a better place. We are sure of good outcomes from the COP,” Javadekar said.
According to Ibrahim Thiaw, Executive Secretary, UNCCD, this conference is the largest ever with nearly 8,000 registered participants and also marks the 25th anniversary of UNCCD.India has taken over the Presidency of the COP from China. During the last COP in 2017 in China, countries had agreed on a 12-year strategy to contain runaway land degradation that is threatening global food and water supply.
UNCCD’s Role and Purpose
The UNCCD is one of three Conventions that came out of the historic 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, other two being the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The UNFCCC holds its general meetings every year, while CBD and CCD meet every two years.
A major global agreement on issues related to land, the convention (UNCCD) seeks to address the phenomenon of desertification, the process through which fertile and productive land become degraded and unfit for useful activities like agriculture.
What is desertification and why is it problematic?
Desertification does not refer to the expansion of deserts, but rather the degradation of land in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas, primarily as a result of human activities and climatic variations. Over-exploitation and inappropriate land use contribute to this land degradation.Desertification has been found to have implications for food and water security, livelihoods, migration, conflicts and as well as international security. Combating desertification demands activities that prevent or reduce land degradation, and restore partially or fully degraded land.
A variety of factors, both natural and human-induced, are known to be affecting the productivity of land, and making them desert-like. Increasing populations and the resultant rise in demand for food and water, feed for cattle, and a wide variety of ecosystem services these offer, have prompted human beings to clear forests, use chemicals, cultivate multiple crops, and over-exploit groundwater. This has affected both the health and productivity of land. Natural processes such as rising global temperatures increase the frequency and intensity of droughts, and changing weather patterns have put further pressure on the land.
Severity of the Problem
According to a recent report by the International Resources Panel, a scientific body hosted by the UN Environment Programme, about 25 per cent of world’s land area has been degraded.Another report, by the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, found that nearly 40 per cent of world’s population was being impacted negatively because of land degradation.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also released a special report on land a few months ago, in which it said that the rate of soil erosion in many areas of the world was up to 100 times faster than the rate of soil formation. Adding further that the annual area of drylands in drought had been increasing at more than 1 per cent every year in the last 50 years, and that nearly 500 million people lived in areas that have experienced desertification after the 1980s.
UN chief Antonio Guterres have also mentioned that 24 billion tons of fertile land is being lost every year. And that desertification, land degradation and drought are major threats affecting millions of people worldwide.
In another report, scientists have warned that the world has already lost a third of its arable land due to erosion or pollution in the past 40 years which disastrously affects the global demand for food.
So, what change can be expected from the ongoing CCD meeting?
The discussions at the CCD have so far remained academic and technical, mainly focusing on the kinds of activities that can be undertaken to restore degraded lands. During the 14th on-going conference, however, India has announced that it would restore 26 million hectares of degraded land by 2030.Other countries have also highlighted their efforts towards achieving what is called Land Degradation Neutrality, or LDN, within their territories. The have also expressed their commitment at ensuring that the amount and quality of land, necessary to support ecosystem services and strengthen food security, remains stable or increases within time periods targeted by them.What the future entails, nevertheless, will depend upon the collective action of all the countries.
