Desertification, Climate And Human Security

Environmentalists recall that the theme of the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) –”Let’s Grow the Future Together’’ — is apt in engaging governments and stakeholders globally in purposeful environmental activities to ensure the security of future generations.
The observance of the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought Day in Ankara, Turkey, on June 17 presented another platform for the world leaders and stakeholders to reiterate the need for more pragmatic approaches to checking land degradation and desertification.
Prior to Ankara convention, the international community had on June 17, 1994, in Paris, expressed concern that “desertification and drought are problems of global dimension affecting all regions’’.
Therefore, in a renewed effort, stakeholders resolved in Ankara to achieve a balance in the rate at which land is degraded and restored by taking concrete actions to avoid, reduce and reverse land degradation, referred to as having achieved Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN).
During the observance, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for an urgent action to protect and restore the world’s degrading land in a bid to reduce forced migration, improve food security and address the global climate change emergency.
He noted that the world was losing 24 billion tonnes of fertile soil and dry land to degradation, expressing concern that the development had reduced national domestic product in developing countries.
Similarly, Mr Ibrahim Thiaw, Executive Secretary of UNCCD, said that land degradation and competition over access to land and water had triggered more bloody conflicts across the world.
“More lives have been claimed in conflicts over access to land and water than Boko Haram insurgency in some northern parts of Nigeria.
“Every day, you have more conflicts among people that are competing for access to land and water; the root cause of the competition is access to natural resources,’’ he observed.
He said that land restoration could not be left in the hands of governments alone, calling for a review of the land tenure system to woo private business investment.
“This means there should be some concession for the business sector to participate in land restoration.
“It means that if a business restores a land, it gets concession on the land for 50 years or more, so that the land remains restored rather than leave it barren.
“Otherwise, why would I invest in land restoration if I had no right on that land; if the land continues to belong to someone else,’’ he asked.
According to him, restoring land will reduce forced migration and keep people on the ground to generate their own incomes and live their own lives and land restoration is about security.
However, analysts note that Nigeria and 121 other countries, in the last four years, have been committed to taking voluntary, measurable actions to check land degradation by 2030.
Also, the Drought and Desertification Department of Federal Ministry of Environment reports that Nigeria’s other LDN national target is to reduce land degradation by 20 per cent by 2030 in degraded hotspots of the country.
“For the land productivity dynamic, it is observed that 360,340 hectares of forestland have shown declining productivity while 178,620 hectares of forestland show early signs of declining,’’ the department reports.
For effective checking of desertification, the Federal Government says it hopes to rehabilitate 1,722,660 hectares of cropland showing declining land productivity and 10,565,040 hectares of cropland showing early signs of declining land productivity by 2030.
The Federal Ministry of Environment also says the government hopes to halt the conversion of forests and wetlands to other land cover classes and increase forest cover by 20 per cent by 2030.
Apart from these efforts, environmentalists note that Nigeria is a key participant in the Great Green Wall for Sahara and Sahel region, an African-led initiative against desertification inaugurated in 2007 by the African Union (AU) to restore the continent’s degraded landscapes.
The wall — 8,000 kilometre-long — stretching across the entire width of over 20 countries in the continent will be the largest structure on the planet.
The initiative is to restore 100 million hectares of currently degraded land and create 10 million green jobs by 2030, among other benefits.
This notwithstanding, Pima Hoffman of African Climate Reporters, a non-governmental organisation, calls on AU to declare a state of emergency on forestry to halt continuing desertification among the 55 member states.
It observes that “millions of animals have been forced to migrate while some have gone extinct due to continuous hunting activities, bush burning, wood cutters and timber commercial sellers.
“Such irrational human activities need to stop if we wish to survive in this planet because without forestry, no one will live in this earth.
“Many African forests today face serious extinction problems; this has brought about reduction of visiting tourists and archaeologists and other forestry experts from international countries to the region.’’
Hoffman says the AU ought to authorise all member states to be more committed to tree planting to combat increasing desertification.
In his view, Prof. Nasiru Idris of Environmental Science, Nasarawa State University, Keffi, says desertification and drought remain the most pressing environmental problems facing Nigeria.
“Nigeria loses more than 350,000 hectares annually to advancing desert, the dunes are threatening life-supporting oasis, burying water points, and in some cases, engulfing major roads in the affected areas.
“Increasing agricultural intensity and livestock over-grazing and increasing demands for fuel wood have led to a rate of deforestation estimated to be 3.5 per cent, one of the highest in the world, ’’ Idris observes.
Environmentalists note further that desertification and land degradation issues will receive more serious and proactive attention by Nigeria ahead of the 14th Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) in New Delhi, India in September.
They express the optimism that during the session, the world leaders will review the progress made to control and reverse further loss of productive land from desertification, land degradation and drought.
They, therefore, call on the Federal Government to be active in the session because Nigeria is among countries mostly affected by desertification, land degradation and drought more than all the European Union parties to UNCCD.
Ojetimi wrote in from News Agency of Nigeria.

Wale Ojetimi