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Intergovernmental preparatory meeting on Commission on Sustainable Development wraps up thematic consideration with debates on desertification, Africa

Attachments

ENV/DEV/1029

Commission on Sustainable Development
Intergovernmental Preparatory Meeting
7th & 8th Meetings (AM & PM)

Rounding out its in-depth consideration of the six thematic priorities of the Commission on Sustainable Development, that body's Intergovernmental Preparatory Meeting today held two panel discussions on policy options to address barriers and constraints to desertification and Africa, respectively.

The Meeting, intended to lay the foundation for the Commission's seventeenth session (4 to 15 May), had previously highlighted obstacles, best practices and lessons learned with regard to agriculture, drought, land and rural development in four interactive sessions held earlier in the week.

Opening this morning's panel discussion was Alemneh Dejene, Senior Officer for Sustainable Development Policy in the National Resource Management and Environment Department of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), who underscored the role of desertification as a major driver of land degradation in much of the world, particularly Africa. While there was a particular need for synergies between sustainable land management and climate-change adaptation mechanisms, it was equally clear that there was a need for increased investment in national resources that maximized field-level synergies, such as those involving crop-livestock interactions. Of existing policy options for increasing sustainable land management to combat desertification, livelihood diversification was particularly important in reducing poverty and boosting fragile ecosystems. As such, it should be a focus in the post-Kyoto era.

Underlining the role of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification as a tool for strengthening the resilience of land, Melchiade Bukuru, Chief of the Convention's New York Liaison Office, said the instrument aimed to improve the livelihoods of affected populations and ecosystem conditions while generating global benefits. Regrettably, however, policies and programmes to prevent and combat degradation were not sufficiently well developed. Countries should give priority to mainstreaming the fight against land degradation into national policy frameworks, while the Global Environmental Facility could provide project funding for controlling deforestation and desertification. Many such projects cut across the focal areas of biodiversity, climate change, international waters and ozone depletion. The real challenge was to be able to disseminate and scale up best practices so that others could replicate them at no cost.

During the discussion that followed, several delegates said the challenge in combating desertification lay, not in developing more policies, but in bridging persistent implementation gaps. There was no robust, widely accepted and harmonized scientific base for desertification information and monitoring systems, which were essential for informed policy decision-making.

A number of other speakers said the Global Environment Facility did not sufficiently focus on anti-desertification efforts. Like other delegates, South Africa's representative noted that, of the three Rio Conventions, the anti-desertification instrument remained particularly undersourced, and he suggested that its procedures for securing funding should be simplified and its global mechanisms leveraged more actively towards local implementation.

Opening the afternoon discussion on Africa, Kobie Brand, Regional Director of the ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability Africa Secretariat, pointed out that the continent faced many interlinked humanitarian, environmental and social crises that had contributed to overall ecosystem degradation and loss. Yet many African communities were much more ready to embrace change than people often thought. Africa had many successful programmes that addressed land degradation, agriculture, biodiversity, water management and infrastructure development. Nevertheless, science and technology were of key importance to its development, and there was a need for scientists and engineers to find cutting-edge solutions to its problems. In terms of climate change and energy, the continent was especially vulnerable due to its low capacity, particularly in coastal cities. To combat that, Africa needed access to funding mechanisms that would benefit communities directly.

Emphasizing that Africa's ecosystems could not be separated from the health of its peoples, Kaddu Sebunya, Director of Programme Technical Design with the African Wildlife Foundation, said those ecosystems and biodiversity would not be protected unless their sustainable use was made the central goal of policy efforts. To do so, policies should seek to harmonize trade and facilitate the flow of resources towards conservation, good governance and human health, while further promoting conservation at scale. Sustained investment in natural resources and ecosystem management was critically important. Local communities should be granted a financial stake in conservation plans so as to promote private investment. To meet the challenges posed by climate change, Africa should "leapfrog" expensive technologies and embrace lighter ones like micro-generators and mobile networks.

In the ensuing dialogue, delegates called for a green revolution across Africa and underlined the environmental and socio-economic challenges hindering the continent's ability to achieve poverty eradication, sustainable development and the other Millennium Development Goals by 2015. Several speakers pointed out, however, that a green revolution in Africa could not be achieved if the current trend to reduce international aid for agriculture continued.

Echoing the sentiments of several speakers from Africa, the representatives of Senegal and Nigeria called for the continent-wide cancellation of bilateral and multilateral debt to facilitate the channelling of financial resources into sustainable development and poverty eradication.

The Intergovernmental Preparatory Meeting will reconvene at 10 a.m. tomorrow, Friday, 27 February, to consider policy options and possible actions to expedite implementation of interlinkages and cross-cutting issues.