Farmers call for investment to combat desertification
about the risks facing the planets food producing regions, as
climate change increasingly turns expanses of land into desert
areas.
Their call for further investment in combating the problem came on the occasion of the World Day to Combat Desertification, celebrated on Saturday.
"Desertification and food security are intrinsically linked," said farmers in the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP).
"Desertification is one of the causes of food insecurity, which then engenders social, economic and political tensions. Farmers are among the first victims of the phenomenon of desertification as natural resources such as fertile topsoil, organic matter, plant cover and healthy crops are the most severely affected by this plague," they added.
The IFAP expressed its commitment to join efforts along with the international community and other relevant stakeholders to be more effective in the endeavour to combat the issue.
Earlier this month, the UN marked World Environment Day by warning that climate change, high water demand and salt contamination could irrevocably damage some of the worlds most fragile regions of food production.
The United Nations Environment Programme report said mountain areas within deserts are under particular threat.
Population growth and inefficient water use are, by 2050, set to move some countries with deserts beyond thresholds of water stress, or even worse, water scarcity. Examples include Chad, Iraq, Niger and Syria.
Renewable supplies of water, which are fed to deserts by large rivers, are also expected to be threatened, in some cases severely, by 2025.
IFAP said farmers are well aware of their important role in their daily fight against desertification and land degradation.
"They are developing improved farming practices to increase agricultural productivity while protecting ecosystems and contributing to land regeneration. However, these experiences are not well documented, and so it is difficult to know what measures and initiatives for either combating desertification or attenuating its effects are being used in the affected regions," it said.
The group said the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is a unique sustainable development and poverty reduction instrument, which suffers from being inadequately developed.
"The lack of investment for implementing the Convention is mainly due to a lack of political will and commitment. IFAP calls on all countries party to the Convention, to place desertification and land degradation high in their development agenda and set up sound strategies to combat desertification in a sustainable way while involving relevant stakeholders including farmers and their organisations," it said in a statement.
In a new policy statement, IFAP called for increased investment in agriculture to turn dryland areas into economic ones through initiatives including investments in family farming and local food security; looking at all the assets of rural development; and development of people-centered and rights-based approaches to rural development.
Almost one-quarter of the earths land surface- some 33.7 million square kilometers- has been defined as 'desert' in some sense. These deserts are inhabited by over 500 million people.
The desert cores remain pristine in many parts of the world, representing some of the planets last remaining areas of total wilderness.
Most of the 12 desert regions, whose future climate has been modelled, are facing a drier future with rainfall in some cases forecast to be 10 to 20 per cent lower by the end of the century.
