Global efforts essential to prevent desertification

By Kim Tae-jong

Desertification is one of the biggest challenges facing the world and all nations should step up efforts to combat the worsening problem, a senior U.N. environmental official said.

Luc Gnacadja, the executive secretary of U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), said the yellow dust storms that blow from China onto the Korean Peninsula every spring are an example underscoring the importance and urgency of global action to prevent desertification.

The storms that originate in the Gobi Desert in China are becoming more severe in their effects on Asian countries, as northeast China and Inner Mongolia have suffered severe droughts and desertification.

“Despite the wish of Koreans to care for their health, they can’t do it within their boundaries. They need to cooperate with other partners to ensure whatever they do will be sustainable,” Gnacadja said in an interview with The Korea Times.

Gnacadja visited Seoul last week for three days to meet officials from the Korea Forest Service for the preparation of the 10th Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP10) to be held in Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province, in October.

“Land that has decreased somewhere has affected elsewhere. That’s the reason why the issue is global. So when you decrease land somewhere, you decrease life elsewhere,” Gnacadja said.

He said the UNCCD seeks to achieve sustainable development in the course of addressing the implementation of the convention through securing effective partnerships.

“What we need is to join forces to make sure whatever is done is done not just for short-term gains but also to secure long-term sustainability. That is why cooperation is needed. That’s why nations of the world need to come together,” he said.

With more land around the world facing deterioration and degradation, however, the world will face serious and far-reaching consequences on a global scale, such as a food crisis, without immediate and practical measures, he said.

“It is said that by 2050, there will be 9 billion people that means we need to increase our food production by 70 percent. But the mission is impossible unless we join forces to stop degrading the resources to produce food and at the same time produce more food.”

Every year, 1 percent of the available land to produce food is degraded, and since 1950, 1.9 billion hectares of land have been lost, equal to the U.S. and Canada put together, he added.

What’s more serious than the desertification problem itself is ignorance at all levels.

“Desertification is one of the biggest challenges in our time, threatening human well-being globally, but (it is) an under-recognized threat. If something is threatening but you don’t know it is a threat, you’re like an endangered species.”

In this regard, he expressed high expectations about the upcoming COP10, saying it will build a platform to draw increased international attention that could drive viable actions to combat desertification, as well as providing a chance to review the progress of the convention for the first time.

“We need to raise our awareness of desertification, and we need to bring knowledge and science to be reflected in policymaking. We need awareness of science, to produce more science that is needed to address the issue,” the executive secretary said. “We need to build partnerships to make all those steps to be defined. That is why the meeting of the conference of the parties is so important.”

Joined by 193 countries as well as the European Commission, the COP10 will be held in Asia for the first time from Oct. 10 to 21.