by Tinashe Madava
Combating desertification has become one of the major challenges facing southern Africa to protect its food-producing capacity.
Warnings from experts over the past years that Africa’s farmlands may become a large dust bowl due to drought and land degradation in the drylands seem not to have raised much attention to the problem.
Desertification, which is land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas is a result of various factors including climatic variations and human activities such as deforestation, unsustainable agricultural practices and overgrazing.
Every year, nearly six million hectares of previously productive land in arid, semi-arid and dry sub- humid areas loses its capacity to produce food. Experts have said that in terms of income, the destruction of productive capacity costs the world about US$42 billion each year. Desertification affects the world’s poorest most.
As the world’s population expands, desertification will become a matter of increasing concern. The costs of combating it will rise each year and failure to do so will result in dramatic food shortages.
Africa has been aware of the desertification problems and has made some attempts to reverse the situation. But the magnitude of the problem has reached unprecedented levels due to lack of ground cover and drought.
At the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, African governments expressed concern that the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) had not adequately addressed the problem of drought and desertification as one of the priority issues affecting the continent.
This resulted in the 47th session of the United Nations General Assembly in 1992 calling for an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Desertification. In October 1994, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification was adopted and about 115 countries signed the convention including most African states.
For the convention to become an international law, at least 50 ratifications were required. But however, by August 1996 only 35 countries worldwide had ratified the Convention for Combating Desertification (CCD). Only three SADC states, Malawi, Lesotho and Mauritius out of 14 African countries have so far ratified the CCD.
At a recent workshop in Harare, Zimbabwe, of environmental non-governmental organisation (NGOs) involved in implementing the CCD in the SADC region organised by the Zimbabwe Environmental Resource Organisation (ZERO), a regional organisation, delegates expressed concern at the delays in ratification of the CCD. A lack of ratification has delayed the implementation of the efforts to combat desertification.
The common goal should be to promote an implementation of the convention in southern Africa. Seen in its full scope, the convention can be a tool for development, security and peace,” Ambassador Hanna Arba Diallo, Executive Secretary of CCD said in a message to the workshop.
Delegates representing nearly 20 NGOs discussed ways of urging the remaining African governments, particularly in the SADC region, that had not yet ratified the CCD to speed up the process. Some of the measures include educating parliamentarians on the importance of combating desertification.
Roben Penny of the Environmental Monitoring Group of South Africa, told the workshop that the country’s Department of Environment had become a little nervous to forward such issues quickly as they seem to have had their fingers burnt in the past. The consultative process has taken 18 months, delaying the ratification.
A representative of Thusano Lefatsheng, Botswana, said that the convention was introduced to NGOs in April this year and parliament was scheduled to debate the ratification before the end of the year.
Botswana and Namibia share the Kalahari Desert. About 37 percent of Botswana is covered by the desert and the two countries are generally very dry. Namibia is also dry, receiving an average rainfall of 500 millimetres per year.
Both countries’ food producing capacity is set to decrease if efforts to combat desertification are not implemented as a matter of urgency.
Representatives of Tanzania, Swaziland, Mozambique and Zambia also reported problems of severe land degradation in their countries, citing over-population in some areas and deforestation as the major causes.
In a statement to the workshop, Zimbabwe’s Minister of Environment and Tourism, Chen Chimutengwende said that the problem of desertification in Africa dates back to the colonial era. “Colonisation instituted gross inequalities in the distribution of land resources and access to economic opportunities,” he said.
The Land Apportionment Act of 1931 in Zimbabwe effectively legalised the unequal distribution of land in favour of the white settlers. Indigenous people were re-located into “reserves” which were over-populated and usually infertile.
Sylvia Jampies, from the NGO Liaison for the CCD Secretariat, Geneva, Switzerland, said the convention considered food security, land tenure, traditional knowledge, modern technology, sanitation and population dynamics and therefore was a “Convention for the People”.
The CCD is one of the most important strategies to combat the problem. Jampies challenged NGOs and community-based organisations to work together to combat desertification.
Ambassador Diallo believes that to encourage, facilitate and assist the local community in using the CCD to improve living conditions is an enormous challenge. Countries must therefore be more serious about the convention and speed up processes to ratify and implement it.
He says that a successful implementation of the CCD could bring a significant response to some of Africa’s most pressing problems such as food security, conservation, drought, emergency management, poverty and migration.
But there are still hopes that the remaining 15 ratifications required for the convention to become law could be received by the end of 1996 or early 1997. Sister conventions of Climate Change and Biodiversity have experienced similar delays in ratification. (SARDC)
