The term ‘desertification’ is used to describe a specific manifestation of ‘land degradation’. The latter is understood as
reduction or loss … of the biological or economic productivity and complexity of rainfed cropland, irrigated cropland, or range, pasture, forest and woodlands resulting from land uses … including processes arising from human activities and habitation patterns, such as … soil erosion … deterioration of the physical, chemical and biological or economic properties of soil; and … long-term loss of natural vegetation (Art. 1 (f) United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, particularly in Africa [‘UNCCD’]).
2
While ‘land degradation’ occurs in the whole terrestrial ecosystem of our planet, ‘desertification’ means only ‘land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas’ (Art. 1 (a) UNCCD). It is the conversion of useable drylands into non-arable land that turns desertification into a phenomenon with the most detrimental effects on nature and human beings.
2. Geographical Extent
3
Desertification damages almost 30% of the total land area of the world. Over a billion hectares, ie 73%, of Africa's dryland are moderately or severely affected. Another 1.4 billion hectares of dryland are affected in Asia. With 74%, the North American continent shows the highest proportion of dryland severely or moderately desertified. All in all, more than 110 countries have drylands that are potentially at risk of becoming deserts. The → United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates that desertification costs the world US$42 billion a year (UNCCD Secretariat [2007] 9–11).
3. Major Causes
4
While drought is a natural phenomenon that occurs when rainfall is significantly below normal recorded levels for a long time, the causes of desertification are essentially human in nature. According to the findings of the UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (‘MA’), ‘(d)esertification is caused by a combination of factors that change over time and vary by location. These include indirect factors such as population pressure, socioeconomic and policy factors, and international trade as well as direct factors such as land use patterns and practices and climate-related processes’ (MA 9; see also → World Population; → Trade and Environment). These divergent drivers of desertification particularly include erosion from cultivation, overgrazing, water mismanagement, and deforestation.
4. Desertification and Poverty
5
At least 90% of dryland populations live in → developing countries. On average they lag far behind the rest of the world in human well-being and development indicators (see MA 7). Hama Arba Diallo, the UNCCD Executive Secretary, stated that ‘(d)esertification stands at the root of persistent poverty in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. For millions of people around the globe, losing productive land means entering the vicious poverty circle’ (UNCCD Secretariat Press Release [2 May 2005]). As to the connection between desertification and poverty, there is much in favour of arguing that there is ‘a complex cause-effect relationship between desertification, population growth and poverty that is best illustrated as a poverty/land degradation downward spiral’ where ‘poverty is both a cause and a consequence of land degradation, and the poor are both agents and victims of the process’ (Letter dated 18 March 2002 from the Permanent Representative of Niger to the United Nations). As a result of this close interdependency of desertification and poverty it should be acknowledged that any effort to eradicate or alleviate the poverty of peoples living in areas affected or threatened by desertification must fail unless it starts with taking measures to effectively prevent desertification or restore and rehabilitate those areas that have already been desertified. There is much in favour of assuming that the success of such measures depends on a sound combination of meaningful governmental policies and technological support from outside, as well as on the active involvement of local communities affected by desertification and poverty.
5. Linkages among Desertification, Climate Change, and Loss of Biodiversity
6
Today there is evidence enough that desertification unavoidably leads to soil and vegetation losses. It thereby aggravates global climate change, because dryland soils contain more than a quarter of the organic carbon stores in the world, as well as nearly all the inorganic carbon. On the other hand, global climate change increases aridity and desertification risk in many areas, although, admittedly, the effect of climate change on desertification is complex and not sufficiently understood to date (MA 17). The close links between the phenomena of desertification, climate change, and the loss of biodiversity demonstrate the need to address the causes of all three environmental problems in an integrated and holistic manner, as far as possible (see also → Biological Diversity, International Protection; → Climate, International Protection).
B. UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)
1. History
7
In the late 1960s, Africa, particularly in the Sahel region, experienced most acute and severe land degradation. Thus, although desertification is a global phenomenon, States' subsequent efforts to combat desertification at the international level focused on the African continent. UN General Assembly Resolution 3337 (XXIX) of 17 December 1974 called for ‘international action to combat desertification’. In September 1977, the UN Conference on Desertification adopted the Plan of Action to Combat Desertification that was legally non-binding in nature. In the run-up to the Rio Conference on Environment and Development (‘UNCED’) it became clear that greater action at the international level was needed to redress the problems of desertification (see also → Stockholm Declaration [1972] and Rio Declaration [1992]).
8
Meeting in Abidjan in December 1991, the African ministers of environment called for a regional convention on desertification. However, this idea encountered resistance not only from other developing States organized in the so-called → Group of 77 (G77) but also from the developed world. Both groups of States underlined that a convention on combating desertification would have to be global. With the adoption of Chapter 12 → Agenda 21 on ‘Managing Fragile Ecosystems: Combating Desertification and Drought’ (A/CONF.151/26/Rev 1, vol I, 9), States convened at the UNCED compromised on entering into negotiations on such a convention in the aftermath of the UNCED (see Chapter 12.40 Agenda 21) and predetermined the structure and contents of the later UNCCD in a very meaningful way. Pursuant to UN General Assembly Resolution 47/188 of 22 December 1992, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Desertification (‘INCD’) was established to elaborate a convention to combat desertification. During the INCD's first session in May 1993, the idea was born that the future convention should pay particular attention to Africa by means of linking it to a special annex for Africa which should exhibit more substance than the annexes for other continents.
9
The outcome of the INCD's work between May 1993 and June 1994 was the draft of the UNCCD. The UNCCD, the first international instrument adopted in the aftermath of the UNCED that was legally binding, was adopted on 17 June 1994 and entered into force on 26 December 1996. As of autumn 2009, 192 States and the European Community were parties to it.
2. Objectives and Contents
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The UNCCD does not deal with soil protection or combating land degradation in general, but deliberately focuses on combating desertification as the most serious form of land degradation, and mitigating its detrimental effects on poor people affected by this phenomenon. Accordingly, the UNCCD is a hybrid instrument that pursues environmental and socio-economic objectives on an equal footing.
11
In its → preamble, the UNCCD makes plain that ‘desertification and drought affect → sustainable development through their interrelationships with important social problems such as poverty, poor health and nutrition, lack of food security, and those arising from migration, displacement of persons and demographic dynamics’. In Art. 2 UNCCD, the UNCCD imposes the duty on all contracting parties to achieve the objective of combating desertification and mitigating the effects of drought by pursuing ‘long-term integrated strategies that focus simultaneously, in affected areas, on improved productivity of land, and the rehabilitation, conservation and sustainable management of land and water resources, leading to improved living conditions, in particular at the community level’ (→ Conservation of Natural Resources). Under the broadly worded Art. 4 UNCCD, both the developed and the developing country parties have to ‘adopt an integrated approach addressing the physical, biological and socio-economic aspects of the processes of desertification and drought’, and ‘integrate strategies for poverty eradication into efforts to combat desertification’. Art. 8 (3) (b) (i) of the UNCCD's Implementation Annex for Africa more explicitly stresses the close nexus between ecological degradation and poverty when it directs the African country parties to prepare national action programmes designed to include, inter alia, measures to conserve natural resources by means of ensuring integrated and sustainable management of natural resources, such as agricultural land, vegetation cover and wildlife, forests, water resources, and biological diversity.
12
Art. 5 UNCCD obliges the affected country parties to take concrete action at the national level. Among these obligations is that of Art. 5 (e) UNCCD directing these parties to ‘provide an enabling environment by strengthening, as appropriate, relevant existing legislation and, where they do not exist, enacting new laws and establishing long-term policies and action programmes’. However, the UNCCD is silent about the regulatory approaches such laws of affected country parties should pursue, and the substance they should attain. Therefore, it does not come as a surprise that as yet relatively few affected developing country parties have enacted desertification-specific legislation.
3. Action Programmes and ‘Bottom-up’ Approach
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Art. 9 UNCCD states that the establishment of action programmes at the national, sub-regional, and regional level is the central element of the strategy to combat desertification and mitigate its detrimental effects. According to Art. (10) (2) (e) UNCCD, the national action programmes (‘NAPs’) are intended to
promote policies and strengthen institutional frameworks which develop cooperation and coordination, in a spirit of partnership, between the donor community, governments at all levels, local populations and community groups, and facilitate access by local populations to appropriate information and technology.
14
Art. 10 (2) (f) UNCCD makes plain that the affected developing country parties shall develop and implement their NAPs through participatory mechanisms ensuring the active involvement of → non-governmental organizations and local populations, particularly resource users, in relevant policy planning, decision-making, and implementation (see also → Environment, Role of Non-Governmental Organizations; → Public Participation in Environmental Matters). Thus, the top-down regulatory approach of the UNCCD in its Art. 5 is complemented by an innovative bottom-up approach that provides for real participation of local populations and communities directly affected by desertification, as well as non-governmental organizations, in the sense ‘that decisions are taken by the people who are to be affected by them, not for them, giving them power to put what has been decided into practice’ (UNCCD Secretariat [2007] 19). Exemplary in this respect is Art. 4 (1) (b) of the UNCCD Implementation Annex for Asia that requires the Asian parties to ‘involve affected populations, including local communities, in the elaboration, coordination and implementation of their action programmes through a locally driven consultative process, with the cooperation of local authorities and relevant national and non-governmental organizations’. After all, the bottom-up approach is to allow a maximum participation of local populations and communities in all relevant decision-making processes, thereby enabling them to take matters into their own hands. Admittedly, after 10 years of bottom-up efforts, success in combating desertification may appear to be unsatisfying (see Tal and Cohen 217). However, in the longer run, once → civil society plays a stronger role in affected developing countries, this approach may prove to be more worth in practice than the traditional top-down approach of development planning.
4. Institutional Aspects
15
The institutions responsible for the functioning of the UNCCD are first and foremost its Conference of the Parties (‘COP’) and its Secretariat, but also the Global Mechanism (‘GM’), the Committee for the Review of the Implementation of the Convention (‘CRIC’), and the Committee on Science and Technology (‘CST’) (→ Environmental Treaty Bodies). Meeting every two years, the UNCCD's COP is in particular entrusted with the task of making the Convention effectively work in practice by promoting and reviewing its implementation; moreover, it is endowed to provide for the further development of the UNCCD, as appropriate, and to seek collaboration with the bodies of other relevant conventions.
5. Funding
16
The effectiveness of multilateral environmental agreements depends inter alia on adequate funding. In this respect the UNCCD's situation has been critical from the outset. It has been rightly observed that ‘the CCD is the only multilateral convention driven by developing countries, land degradation is not a priority issue for donor governments, and the scorching breath of the desert is not readily felt by the prosperous public of the rich North’ (COP 7 ‘Summary’ 16). The Convention itself remains cryptic. Art. 20, which deals with financial resources, represents a compromise: both developed and developing country parties agree, ‘taking into account their capabilities’, to ‘make every effort to ensure that adequate financial resources are available’ (Art. 20 (1) UNCCD). Affected developing country parties ‘undertake to mobilize adequate financial resources for the implementation of their national action programmes’ (Art. 20 (3) UNCCD). In return, the developed country parties ‘undertake … to mobilize substantial financial resources … in order to support the implementation’ of anti-desertification programmes (Art. 20 (2) (a) UNCCD). The UNCCD provides for the establishment of the Global Mechanism to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of existing financial resources in combating desertification and its detrimental effects and ‘to promote actions leading to the mobilization and channelling of substantial financial resources … to affected developing country Parties’ (Art. (21) (4) UNCCD). It is up to the Conference of the Parties of the UNCCD to identify ‘an organization to house the Global Mechanism’ (Art. 21 (5) UNCCD). In 2003, at COP 6, the → Global Environment Facility (GEF) was designated as the financial mechanism of the UNCCD. In 2005, at COP 7, the Convention's COP developed a memorandum of understanding between the UNCCD and the GEF. Unlike climate change and biodiversity, desertification was not made a focal area of the GEF. As a result, progress under the UNCCD has been slowed due to the lack of multilateral funding.
17
The UN → Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) urged the parties to the UNCCD in 2005, inter alia, to provide adequate financial support to the activities of the UNCCD Secretariat in facilitating the implementation of the Convention (Comprehensive Review of the Activities of the Secretariat [12 August 2005] UN Doc ICCD/COP(7)/4, 19). However, at COP 8 in 2007, the parties to the Convention could not approve the Secretariat's core budget because Japan insisted on its position for zero nominal growth. Thus, the UNCCD Secretariat continues to face considerable financial difficulties.
6. Implementation
18
When the UNCCD was adopted in June 1994, it encompassed four regional implementation annexes, namely for Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia, and the Northern Mediterranean. In December 2000, COP 4 adopted a fifth implementation annex for Central and Eastern Europe. With these five annexes, the UNCCD gives its parties rather clear and concrete guidance as to its implementation in practice. As it was apparent from the outset that the UNCCD should give priority to the specific interests and needs of the African continent, the implementation annex for Africa is the most detailed and elaborate among the five annexes.
19
The extent to which the UNCCD has become effective in today's practice highly depends on whether the affected State Parties have met their obligation to establish action programmes at the national, sub-regional, and regional level as envisaged in Arts 9 and 10 UNCCD. Of these programmes, the NAPs may practically be the most important. At the end of 2007, the UNCCD Secretariat's list of NAPs encompassed a total of 97 programmes (Africa 37, Asia 27, Latin America and the Caribbean 25, the Northern Mediterranean 4, and Central and Eastern Europe 4). In contrast, there are only very few sub-regional action programmes (Africa 4, Asia 2), and just one regional action programme in Latin America. However, the effectiveness of NAPs not only depends on their numbers, but even more on their quality.
20
More than 10 years after its entry into force, the UNCCD is still in a phase of transition from awareness raising to implementation. However, there are some slight signs of hope that the parties to the Convention ‘are now braced to cross the watershed and proceed to implementation’ in a more active way (see COP 7 ‘Summary’ 16).
21
At COP 7 in October 2005, an initiative entitled ‘The New Alliance to Combat Land Degradation in Africa (TerrAfrica)’ was launched with the aim of constituting ‘a stage for partnership and collective actions in addressing land degradation, and mobilizing financial resources’ (ibid 6). More recently, in early September 2007, COP 8 decided to establish the ‘Ten-Year Strategic Plan and Framework to Enhance the Implementation of the Convention’. There is hope that it will help to make the UNCCD an effective tool to address the needs of the developing world's rural poor by combating desertification and eradicating poverty.
C. Overlaps and Synergies between UNCCD, CBD, and UNFCCC
22
Aware of the fact that land degradation, particularly in its worst form of desertification, biodiversity loss, and global climate change are strongly interlinked (see para. 5 above), the UNCCD, in its Art. 8 (1), explicitly refers to the Convention on Biological Diversity (‘CBD’ [concluded 5 June 1992, entered into force 29 December 1993] 1760 UNTS 79) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (‘UNFCCC’ [adopted 9 May 1992, entered into force 21 March 1994] 1771 UNTS 107). It encourages its parties to jointly implement their activities under said three conventions and further strengthen the collaboration between the treaty bodies concerned in order to increase synergies and effectiveness of all three conventions (see MA 18). Thus, much speaks in favour of an observation made at COP 7 of the UNCCD, according to which ‘[t]he growing insistence of developing countries to address desertification in close connection with the other two conventions, might mean … that combating climate change and protecting biodiversity will have to depend forthwith on progress made by the CCD. In other words, they will stand or fall together’ (COP 7 ‘Summary’ 17). The Madrid Declaration of COP 8 demanded, inter alia, ‘strengthened linkages through increased cooperation between the three Rio conventions’ (COP 8 ‘Summary’ 5). The UNCCD's Joint Inspection Unit of 2005 even saw the UNCCD ‘as taking the lead in promoting and implementing synergies between the Conventions’ (Comprehensive Review of the Activities of the Secretariat 18).
D. Evaluation of the UNCCD
23
The UNCCD is often referred to as an important tool for reaching the 2000 UN Millennium Development Goals which constitute an important political framework for combating global poverty. Due to its ‘bottom-up’ approach, the UNCCD appears to be ‘a people's convention’ that is ‘the only one directly addressing the needs of the developing world's rural poor, and a critical tool to fight global poverty’ (COP 7 ‘Summary’ 16). In terms of financial resources, the UNCCD is undernourished compared to the CBD and the UNFCCC. This is why the UNCCD also lags considerably behind its sister conventions regarding its implementation in practice. Therefore, success or failure of the Convention depend on whether the parties to the UNCCD will take the Madrid Declaration at COP 8 seriously which stated: ‘The strategic orientation of the Convention, which has now been consolidated in Madrid, reaffirms our common political commitment to the process of UNCCD implementation and promises to provide a more specific response to this question. We can fulfil our commitments and we must do so. All that is needed is stronger political will’ (COP 8 ‘Summary’ 5).
Select Bibliography
WC Burns ‘The International Convention to Combat Desertification: Drawing a Line in the Sand?’ (1995) 16 MichJIntlL 831–82.
KW Danish ‘International Environmental Law and the "Bottom-up" Approach: A Review of the Desertification Convention’ (1995) 3 IndJGlobalLegalStud 133–76.
A Iles ‘The Desertification Convention: A Deeper Focus on Social Aspects of Environmental Degradation?’ (1995) 36 HarvIntlLJ 207–19.
MA Bekhechi ‘Une nouvelle étape dans le développement du droit international de l'environnement: la convention sur la désertification’ (1997) 101 RGDIP 5–44.
A Konate ‘L'Afrique et la convention des Nations Unies sur la lutte contre la désertification’ (2000) 12 AfrJIntl&CompL 718–53.
T Zhenghua ‘UN Convention to Combat Desertification, and Prevention and Control of Desertification in China’ in T Zhenghua and R Wolfrum (eds) Implementing International Environmental Law in Germany and China (Kluwer The Hague 2001) 85–106.
B Kjellén ‘The Saga of the Convention to Combat Desertification: The Rio/Johannesburg Process and the Global Responsibility for the Drylands’ (2003) 12 RECIEL 127–32.
J Zeidler and KJ Mulongoy ‘The Dry and Sub-humid Lands Programme of Work of the Convention on Biological Diversity: Connecting the CBD and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification’ (2003) 12 RECIEL 164–75.
I Hannam and B Boer Drafting Legislation for Sustainable Soils: A Guide (IUCN Gland 2004).
A Zoltani ‘Desertification in the Mediterranean: Environmental Risks of a Mediterranean Free Trade Agreement’ (2006) 17 ColoJIntlEnvtlL&Pol 385–418.
A Tal and JA Cohen ‘Bringing "Top-Down" to "Bottom-Up": A New Role for Environmental Legislation in Combating Desertification’ (2007) 31 HarvEnvtlLRev 163–218.
Select Documents
Convention to Combat Desertification in Those Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, Particularly in Africa (opened for signature 14 October 1994, entered into force 26 December 1996) 1954 UNTS 3.
UN Commission on Sustainable Development‘Letter dated 18 March 2002 from the Permanent Representative of Niger to the United Nations Addressed to the Chairman of the Commission Acting as the Preparatory Committee’ (16 April 2002) UN Doc. A/CONF.199/PC/16.
UN Conference on Desertification ‘Plan of Action to Combat Desertification’ (29 August–9 September 1977) UN Doc A/CONF.74/3/Add.2.
UNCCD COP 7 ‘Summary of the Seventh Conference of the Parties to the Convention to Combat Desertification’ (31 October 2005) 4 Earth Negotiations Bulletin No 186.
UNCCD COP 8 ‘Summary of the Eighth Conference of the Parties to the Convention to Combat Desertification’ (17 September 2007) 4 Earth Negotiations Bulletin No 206.
UNCCD Press Release ‘UN Desertification Talks Start in Bonn to Promote Stronger National Action’ (2 May 2005) <Show URL> (22 October 2009).
UNCCD Secretariat Down to Earth—A Simplified Guide to the Convention to Combat Desertification, Why it is Necessary and What is Important and Different about it (6th edn Centre for our Common Future Geneva 2008).
UNGA Res 3337 (XXIX) (17 December 1974) GAOR 29th Session Supp 31 vol 1, 64.
UNGA Res 47/188 (22 December 1992) GAOR 47th Session Supp 49 vol 1, 137.
United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (ed) Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Desertification Synthesis (World Resources Institute Washington DC 2005).
