Message from UN Under-Secretary-General
and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner
on the occasion of the World Day to Combat
Desertification, 17 June 2011
Nairobi, 17 June 2011
- Today, the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP) joins hands with the Secretariat
of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification
and dryland countries and communities across
the globe.
This year's theme for
the World Day to Combat Desertification
is "Forests Keep Drylands Working".
A theme relevant to
the 2011 UN International Year of Forests
and a theme that speaks to the crucial and
inseparable link between these two ecosystems
in terms of lives and livelihoods and the
urgent need to fight poverty.
Today, some 18% of the
global dryland system is occupied by forests
and woodland. Half of the world's livestock
lives off arid zone forests and many of
the 2 billion people who live in the world's
drylands depend on these forests for their
food and energy needs.
But the value of arid
zone forests is often underestimated and
as a result, the policy incentives required
to sustainably conserve and manage these
forests are underdeveloped.
UNEP has identified
forests and forestry as one of 10 key sectors
that, with the right kind of public policies
and strategic investments, will be central
to a transition to a low carbon, resource
efficient Green Economy.
An economy just as important
to someone living in the drylands of Africa,
Asia or Mesoamerica as it is to someone
bordering the deserts of Australia or living
in parts of Arizona or the northern Mediterranean.
The analysis indicates
that investing an additional US$40 billion
a year in the forestry sector could halve
deforestation rates by 2030, increase rates
of tree planting by around 140 per cent
by 2050 and catalyze the creation of millions
of new jobs.
Meanwhile such an investment
- amounting to around 0.034 per cent of
global GDP - could also remove or 'sequester'
an extra 28 per cent of carbon from the
atmosphere.
Extending forest cover
can play an essential role in stabilizing
soil and improving water supplies while
also recycling nutrients vital for agricultural
productivity - they represent, alongside
other natural or nature-based assets, in
some cases up to 90 per cent of the GDP
of the poor.
The World Day to Combat
Desertification comes just under 12 months
in advance of the UN Conference on Sustainable
Development (known as Rio+20) taking place
in Brazil next June.
Two decades after the
Earth Summit of 1992, that established the
desertification convention alongside those
covering climate and biodiversity and the
UN Forum on Forests, the world will reconvene.
A Green Economy in the
context of sustainable development and poverty
eradication is one of the two themes and
a central opportunity to evolve the sustainable
development agenda onto a decisive, more
action-focused footing.
Over the past few decades,
many inspiring projects and initiatives
have flourished in drylands as a result
of the efforts of national and international
organizations and institutions including
the United Nations.
For example, in China's
Loess Plateau, which has been degraded by
decades of deforestation and unsustainable
farming, around US$520 million was invested
by the International Development Association
and others to regenerate the ecosystem and
the many services it provided. These investments
helped to reduce sediment loads into the
Yellow River by around 100 million tones
per year, reducing both flood risks and
the cost of maintaining dams. The investment
also brought positive impacts on livelihoods,
through increased crop yields and employment.
New and transformational
pathways are also emerging from payments
for ecosystem services to paying communities
under the carbon markets for farming methods,
including agroforestry, that not only restore
degraded land, improve yields but also soak
up carbon from the atmosphere.
UNEP and the UN Forum
on Forests (UNFF) are designing a project
which seeks to increase political attention
and financing for sustainable forest management
in low forest cover countries. The project
aims to improve understanding of the main
obstacles and challenges in financing sustainable
forest management and to develop better
governance frameworks for financing forest
management and the valuable ecosystem services
that forests provide.
UNEP and the Global
Environment Facility (GEF) are also running
a project to help improve the management
of land between Nigeria and Niger, to avoid
desertification and the degradation of local
ecosystems.
Smart public policies,
able to trigger international assistance
and private sector support, will be among
the key to assisting smallholder farmers
become part of a Green Economy path.
Rio+20 is an opportunity
to scale-up and to accelerate these transformations
in communities and countries.
By 17 June 2012, people
across the globe will know whether more
than 190 governments meeting in Brazil found
that sense of leadership that made 1992
a landmark event in terms of vision and
international cooperation including on the
desertification challenge.
By 17 June 2012, the
world will know whether that paradigm shift
has been made towards a more secure and
sustainable future for nearly seven billion
people, including the two billion living
in drylands and the 1.6 billion who depend
on forests.
