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Joint International Conference
Desertification and the International Policy Imperative
17-19 December 2006, Algiers

Conference Background and Context

Desertification has emerged as a major global challenge that affects human well-being and threatens to reverse the gains in human development in many parts of world. Indeed, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment ranks desertification – land degradation in drylands as a result of climatic factors and human activities – among the world’s greatest environmental challenges, destabilizing societies by deepening poverty and creating environmental refugees who can often add stress to areas that may not be degraded. Impacts of desertification are exacerbated by political marginalization of the dryland poor, and the slow growth of health and education infrastructure.

The greatest vulnerability is ascribed to sub-Saharan and Central Asian drylands. For example, in three key regions of Africa—the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, and Southeast Africa—severe droughts occur on average once every 30 years. These droughts triple the number of people exposed to severe water scarcity at least once in every generation, leading to major food and health crises.

Desertification has other strong adverse impacts on non-drylands as well. In addition to dust storms, biophysical impacts include downstream flooding, impairment of global carbon sequestration capacity, and regional and global climate change.

One may argue that the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s), a suite of objectives globally agreed by world leaders in 2000 to be met by 2015, cannot be met without addressing the problem of desertification effectively. Fortunately, effective policies and sustainable agricultural practices can reverse the decline of drylands. Chief among these are measures that protect soils from erosion, salinization and other forms of degradation. Proper land use management policies are needed to protecting existing vegetative cover from overgrazing, over-exploitation, trampling and unsustainable irrigation practices.

These policies can be further strengthened by creating viable livelihood alternatives for drylands populations and directly linking them to national strategies to combat desertification and poverty reduction. In other words, the situation may also be improved by reducing the stresses on dryland ecosystems. This can be achieved either through the introduction of alternative livelihoods that have less of an impact on dryland resources, or by the creation of economic opportunities in urban centers and areas outside drylands. Such an approach to creating livelihoods would benefit from the unique advantages of drylands: year-round availability of solar energy, attractive landscapes, and large wilderness areas.

On the whole, combating desertification yields multiple local and global benefits and helps mitigate biodiversity loss and human-induced global climate change. Addressing desertification is critical and essential for meeting the Millennium Development Goals successfully. Environmental management approaches for combating desertification, mitigating climate change, and conserving biodiversity are interlinked in many ways. Therefore, joint implementation of major environmental conventions can lead to increased synergy and effectiveness, benefiting dryland people.

While the conceptual awareness of these linkages is present and growing, its reflection in the design and implementation of policies has been lagging behind. This applies at all levels: formulation of international and global policies for combating desertification have been hindered by political marginalization and lack of concrete data; examples of effective national efforts to combat desertification are also few, as a result of insufficient resources and ineffective policy integration; and implementation at the local level has been hampered by lack of capacity and societal motivation.

The need for a forum in which such policy matters can be discussed in depth is paramount. Using the IYDD umbrella, the policy dialogue for desertification can be moved forward in a major way through this international conference. By providing an unbiased forum where policy approaches can be openly discussed and local case studies can be evaluated, significant breakthroughs in policy formulation may emerge.