Convention To Combat Desertification Research Articles

High Level Meeting on National Drought Policy: Summary and Major Outcomes

Drought is widely recognized as a slow creeping natural hazard that occurs as a consequence of the natural climatic variability. In recent years, concern has grown world-wide that droughts may be increasing in frequency and severity given the changing climatic conditions. Responses to droughts in most parts of the world are generally reactive in terms of crisis management and are known to be untimely, poorly coordinated and disintegrated. Without a coordinated, national drought policy, nations will continue to respond to drought in a reactive, crisis management mode. In order to address the issue of national drought policy, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the Secretariat of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in collaboration with a number of partners, organized the High-level Meeting on National Drought Policy (HMNDP) in Geneva, Switzerland, from 11 to 15 March 2013. The goal of HMNDP was to provide practical insight into useful, science-based actions to address key drought issues and various strategies to cope with drought. During HMNDP, detailed discussions were held during a scientific segment over 3.5 days, leading to the adoption of a HMNDP Declaration in a High Level Segment, calling on all the governments around the world to develop and implement national drought policies. The major outcomes of the scientific and high level segments are presented.

Achieving Zero Net Land Degradation: Challenges and opportunities

Land degradation is extensive, covering approximately 23% of the globe's terrestrial area, increasing at an annual rate of 5–10 million ha, and affecting about 1.5 billion people globally. Such detrimental processes call for urgent and comprehensive action to halt land degradation. In this paper, we assess the causes and extent of land degradation around the world, followed by an outline of the various challenges in implementing a global Zero Net Land Degradation (ZNLD) policy. The concept of ZNLD proposes a scheme under which the extent of global degraded lands will decrease or at least, remain stable. To enable this type of scenario, the rate of global land degradation should not exceed that of land restoration. Restoration efforts should include not only croplands, rangelands, and woodlands, but also natural and semi-natural lands that do not generate direct economic revenues. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) envisages achieving this target by 2030. Despite being seemingly ambitious, the target of ZNLD could be achieved if degraded lands are restored to a considerable extent and, at the same time, land-degrading management practices are replaced with ones that conserve soils. To enable effective implementation of these steps, it is necessary to formulate a ZNLD Protocol aimed at managing assessment actions and maintaining of supportive policies and regulations. Restoration projects could be financed through payments for improving ecosystem services, as well as other economic mechanisms. Achieving the target of land degradation neutrality would decrease the environmental footprint of agriculture, while supporting food security and sustaining human wellbeing.

Qualitative Analysis of Extent and Severity of Desertification for Semi-Arid Regions Using Remote Sensing Techniques

 Abstract—International Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD) defines desertification as land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climate variations and human activities. Desertification is a self-accelerating process, with exponentially rising rehabilitation costs. Biophysical, climatological and socio-economical parameters need to be integrated for analysis. Remote sensing is an effective monitoring technique due to temporal and synoptic data. Current work aims at integrating various parameters influencing desertification process for estimation of qualitative desertification severity using GIS. Proposed method uses satellite data as basic input along with climatic, terrain and demographic data. Weightage-driven approach is used for evaluating desertification severity map using regression analysis using field data. Remote sensing based indicators have high weightages as compared to ancillary data. The areas under medium to high severity classes are stressing the need of continuous monitoring and mitigation measures.

The case of urban sprawl in Spain as an active and irreversible driving force for desertification

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) does not distinguish between natural and human drivers, and between active and inherited desertification. Partly as a result of these ambiguities the UNCCD has attracted a low level of international attention. As the Spanish case study shows, this vagueness hinders the implementation of effective strategies to combat this global challenge. Unsustainable agricultural land management is the most blamed desertification agent in Spain but as land use changes trends demonstrate, desertification phenomena are fueled by a push–pull dynamics. Our data indicate that agriculture, rather than being a desertification agent, is a victim of a set of social and economic conditions leading to its abandonment and/or transformation in urban land, becoming irreversibly degraded by soil sealing. From 1975 to 2008, half a million ha of former agricultural land has been made available for development. Urban sprawl has become the most active desertification agent in Spain.

DESERT ECOSYSTEMS: MAPPING, MONITORING & ASSESSMENT USING SATELLITE REMOTE SENSING

Abstract. Desert ecosystems are unique but fragile ecosystems , mostly vulnerable to a variety of degradational processes like water erosion, vegetal degradation, salinity, wind erosion , water logging etc. Some researchers consider desertification to be a process of change, while others view it as the end result of a process of change. There is an urgent need to arrest the process of desertification and combat land degradation. Under the auspices of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad has undertaken the task of mapping, monitoring and assessment of desertification carrying out pilot project in hot and cold desert regions in drylands on 1:50,000 scale followed by systematic Desertification Status Mappaing (DSM) of India on 1:500,000 scale.

ESD and the Rio Conventions

Chapter 36 of Agenda 21, a key document of the 1992 Earth Summit, emphasised reorienting education towards sustainable development. While two of the Rio conventions, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), developed communication, education and public awareness (CEPA) strategies, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) established their awareness raising, communication and education (ARCE) unit in the secretariat. The concept of education for sustainable development (ESD) largely evolved independently through the leadership of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and has had, as yet, little impact on the programmes of the conventions. However, recent developments seem to lay the foundation for ESD to be integrated into the conventions. UNCCD has started infusing ESD thinking into its educational programmes. The recently concluded CBD Conference of Parties (COP 11) is important because it not only set education high on the agenda but also connected ESD with the CBD approach towards achieving its targets. Similarly, UNFCCC at COP 18 held at Doha saw 33 multilateral agencies announce the formation of the UN Alliance on Climate Change, Training and Public Awareness. The challenge for the ESD community is to carry this process forward and put in place institutional mechanisms to integrate ESD with the goals of the conventions as we move towards 2014 and beyond.

Numerical model to assess the impact of the strategies to mitigate desertification

Desertification is considered a global environmental problem with political and socioeconomic implications. Desertification, exacerbated by climate change, is the largest environmental problem in Chile affecting almost two third of the national territory. This study takes place in a latitudinal gradient of the north-central Chilean drylands, where desertification is a threat to agriculture, livestock and forestry (ALF). In the context of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the implementation of the Chilean National Action Programme (NAP), the country is conducting policies and investing in mitigation strategies to combat land degradation and desertification. The main objective of this paper is the development of an integrative methodological approach using real data of the territorial and socioeconomic indicators. With the proposed methodology we assess the impact of the mitigation and land degradation strategies supported by the ALF promotion agencies in the fight against desertification, projecting different scenarios of change. The data were collected in 2008 in Santiago, Chile. The results of the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) suggest that technical irrigation and the improvement of grasslands and pastures play an important role in the fight against desertification. The results of the model projections are consistent, suggesting that the efforts of the ALF promotion agencies have a positive impact in fighting desertification. Inaction of ALF mitigation strategies would increase desertification. This methodological approach, performed with real data, is a contribution for the development of integrative assessments, for replication and for forthcoming discussions.

Fertile ground? Options for a science–policy platform for land

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) remains the only ‘Rio Convention’ that is not well served by the scientific community and lacks the equivalent of an IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) or the proposed IPBES (Intergovernmental Science–Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services). The mounting pressures on land (and water) that can drive its degradation include population growth and associated food security concerns, over use, creeping degradation, competition between agriculture and renewable energy production, carbon sequestration and land acquisition by foreign entities. These environmental and human pressures clearly require urgent policy attention. We report the results of a survey of the scientific community on the need and possible options for a science–policy platform that focuses on land. The paper then describes the remit and role of an independent platform, the benefits and possible modalities that are inclusive and build on existing institutional structures. Both short-term and longer term options are presented that can respond to immediate needs while establishing a mechanism that can handle the interacting and sometimes overlapping aspects of land covered by other Multilateral Environment Agreements (MEAs). Short-term options include establishing a platform via an ad hoc working group within the proposed IPBES that would feed its outputs into the UNCCD and other relevant MEAs. Long-term options include a more polycentric approach, establishing a network of networks that could evolve into a fully-fledged Independent Platform on Land Degradation given sufficient support, interest and leadership from the international and donor communities.

Costs of land degradation and benefits of land restoration: a review of valuation methods and suggested frameworks for inclusion into policy-making.

Abstract Land degradation has become a growing concern with the current increase in demand for arable land. Sustainable land management and land restoration practices are required in order to meet the demands to provide food and other services. Adoption of improved practices has, however, not been widespread partly because of a lack of clarity on the true economic value and setting of proper financial incentives. This review focuses on the economic costs of land degradation as a prelude to two ongoing initiatives involving the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). We review how ecosystem services derived from land have been economically valued to date. Economic valuation has mostly focused on the use value of provisioning services and cultural services, with limited valuation of non-use value of cultural services. Also, no unique valuation method has been applied following methodological developments, varying study objectives and data availability constraints. These factors impair coherent and consistent estimation of the total economic value of land degradation across countries. We identify a need to develop harmonized valuation methods to estimate total economic value under strong data and capacity constraints. We propose two alternative frameworks for harmonized total economic valuation of land degradation at country level to guide further research in making environmental valuation more relevant and practical under strong data and capacity constraints.

To the treatment and interpretation of the “desertification” term in Russia

The article discusses the issue on contradictions and shortcomings in the application and interpretation in official documents of the Government of the Russian Federation (State reports, projects, and programmes) of the “desertification” term used in the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) ratified by Russia in 2003. The attention is paid that the risks connected with these contradictions can cause an inhibition of preparation and implementation of measures combating desertification and soil degradation in Russia. Two different consistent approaches are offered for the further use of this term for internal political and legislative purposes, including state programmes in the Russian Federation.

Global Environmental Governance and Desertification: A Study of Gulf Cooperation Council Countries

Environmental problems have assumed importance of late and among them desertification has received more attention than many others. It is a complex issue arising from the interaction of physical, biological, political, social, cultural and economic factors in the dry lands. It makes an impact on the livelihood of the poor. The term was coined by Louis Lavauden in 1927 and popularised by Andre Aubreville in 1962. It is an irony that over 100 formal definitions of desertification were proposed by experts from time to time and a generally agreed definition was decided upon only in 1977. It received global attention in the same decade. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is a part of the international concern about it. This book seeks to analyse its implementation in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries.

Towards a World Desertification Atlas. Relating and selecting indicators and data sets to represent complex issues

Mapping land degradation and desertification (LDD) at the global scale still is a conceptual and operational challenge. The present study has been performed in the frame of the WAD (new World Atlas of Desertification) initiative. The objective of the paper is to test a structured procedure to identify relevant indicators for an effective representation of complex global LDD issues, based on available data sets (both geo-spatial and statistical), and conform to the UNCCD (United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification) requirements. Available indicators and data sets were reviewed and the collected information was organized through a database (DB). The proposed selection procedure is semi-quantitative and based on expert ranking decisions made within the relational DB environment, which allows for transparent definition and iterative refinement of the selection rules. The procedure was operationally tested on a concrete case study (“deforestation in Sub-Saharan Africa”) by using available global data sets. Questions related to global data availability and to major conceptual aspects such as the concept of “minimum indicator set”, the indicator frameworks, the ranking and selection criteria are raised and discussed.

Combating Ineffectiveness: Climate Change Bandwagoning and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification

This article examines the role of linkage politics in revitalizing the largely ineffective UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). I argue that the UNCCD Secretariat has taken a leadership role in driving a regime linkage agenda that has focused disproportionately on linkages to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). By comparing the UNCCD Secretariat's attempts to build desertification-mitigation and desertification-adaptation linkages, I propose three criteria for predicting whether regime linkages are likely to benefit source regimes (here the UNCCD): the linkage's contribution to source governance goals; the credibility of knowledge presented by the source regime; and the linkage's political feasibility for the target regime. This analysis shows secretariats to be important actors in linkage politics whose actions can lead to both beneficial and harmful outcomes for the regimes they are intended to serve. Finally, by asking whether desertification issues that overlap with climate change might be better addressed under the UNFCCC, I question when regime overlap indicates regime redundancy and warrants regime death.

Science for improving the monitoring and assessment of dryland degradation

AbstractThe United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) commissioned its First Scientific Conference in 2009 to deliberate on ways to improve the global monitoring and assessment of dryland degradation to support decision‐making in land and water management. The papers included in this issue of Land Degradation & Development elaborate the reasoning behind the 11 recommendations that emerged from the Conference and were formally submitted to the UNCCD. These papers argue for a more holistic, harmonised and integrated approach to dryland monitoring and assessment, and describe scientific and institutional approaches for achieving this goal. A central challenge is to integrate human/social with environmental observations in accordance with the Convention's view that the interactions and tradeoffs between human development needs and land condition must be considered. A global monitoring and assessment regime should be established to gather and analyse relevant data on a routine basis, allowing locally‐relevant indicators to be aggregated into meaningful classes appropriate to different decision‐making levels. The underlying forces that cause changes in land condition should also be monitored and assessed so that remedial actions can target the true causes of dryland degradation, including social, economic, policy, institutional and knowledge drivers that have often been overlooked in the past. Monitoring and assessment should hybridise differing types of knowledge generated by different stakeholders in order to strengthen collective capacities to combat dryland degradation. An independent scientific advisory mechanism should be created to advise the UNCCD about the results emerging from the monitoring and assessment regime in order to improve decision‐making. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Integrated land degradation monitoring and assessment: Horizontal knowledge management at the national and international levels

AbstractThe need for improved horizontal knowledge management at the national and international levels is essential for monitoring and assessment of land degradation and desertification. At the national level, governments utilise scientific, socio‐economic and technical data and information for strategic planning, priority setting and national environment and development planning. However, challenges including the lack of capacity and lack of collaboration and sharing of information across governments affect responses to and the effectiveness of monitoring and knowledge exchange, along with the ability to effectively implement treaties. At the international level, a number of Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) share cross‐sectoral themes related to research and monitoring, information exchange, technology transfer, capacity building and financial resources. The need for increased synergies stems from the similarities between the issues they address. Challenges for improving knowledge management at the international level include insufficient interaction between the scientific bodies of the various MEAs; duplication of reporting, monitoring and assessment efforts; limited knowledge management between the various assessments addressing ecosystems and biological diversity during the past decade; and insufficient collaboration between the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the UN system and the international non‐governmental organisation (NGO) community. This paper examines these challenges and offers recommendations on how monitoring and assessment knowledge can be better managed at the national and international levels. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Application of indicator systems for monitoring and assessment of desertification from national to global scales

AbstractThis paper suggests how the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) community can progressively make use of a flexible framework of analytical approaches that have been recently developed by scientific research. This allows a standardized but flexible use of indicator sets adapted to specific objectives or desertification issues relevant for implementing the Convention. Science has made progress in understanding major issues and proximate causes of dryland degradation such that indicator sets can be accordingly selected from the wealth of existing and documented indicator systems. The selection and combination should be guided according to transparent criteria given by existing indicator frameworks adapted to desertification conceptual frameworks such as the Dryland Development Paradigm and can act as a pragmatic entry point for selecting area‐ and theme‐specific sets of indicators from existing databases. Working on different dryland sub‐types through a meaningful stratification is proposed to delimit and characterize affected areas beyond the national level. Such stratification could be achieved by combining existing land use information with additional biophysical and socio‐economic data sets, allowing indicator‐based monitoring and assessment to be embedded in a framework of specific dryland degradation issues and their impacts on key ecosystem services. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Monitoring and assessment of land degradation and desertification: Towards new conceptual and integrated approaches

AbstractThe implementation of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) needs agreed, scientifically sound and practical methodologies for monitoring and assessing the state and trend of land degradation as well as for monitoring the performance of management programmes. The lack of sufficient and integrated monitoring and assessment (M&A) has in the past been identified as a major constraint for combating desertification. Implementing efficient M&A programmes, however, requires careful analysis of the information needs of the different stakeholders, a clear scientific concept of the processes and drivers of land degradation and an analysis of the theoretical and practical possibilities for adequate M&A. This paper briefly analyses the information needs of diverse stakeholders, reviews existing M&A systems, and highlights key aspects for a scientifically sound approach to monitoring and assessment. Analysis of existing approaches shows that in spite of their relevance, standardised procedures for their implementation at operational scales are lacking. This is partly attributable to the lack of agreed and clear definitions, related difficulties in defining and hence in measuring the attributes chosen to represent land degradation and desertification and the varying degrees of paucity of field data. There is also the urgent need to better integrate bio‐physical and socio‐economic aspects of desertification through a suitably robust scientific framework that links the drivers, processes and symptoms of desertification. Such a framework will allow for the identification of key variables to be monitored and will provide a basis for an improved forecasting and assessment of vulnerability, thereby providing highly important information for policy‐ and decision‐making. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Desertification assessment and mapping in the Russian Federation

For the first time assessment and mapping of desertification have been performed in Russia at the 1 : 2500000 scale using data of geometrical sounding of the earth and in accordance with the approaches recommended by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). It is shown that desertified areas, areas experiencing desertification, and areas threatened by desertification occupy about 1250000 km2. Nineteen causes of changes in natural and natural-artificial systems, seven degradation trends, and three progradation trends are recognized. Data on their prevalence are also presented. Top-priority objectives in combating desertification are outlined.

Integrative geospatial approaches for the comprehensive monitoring and assessment of land management sustainability: Rationale, Potentials, and Characteristics

AbstractSustainable dryland management seeks to improve the conditions of people and ecosystems affected by degradation, but it is often unclear which land management strategies work, which ones do not and why. Monitoring and assessment (M&A) can support decision‐making by providing this information. As implied by the 10‐year Strategy of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), however, M&A efforts have thus far been insufficient or inadequate. We argue that integrative geospatial approaches should be implemented to enhance dryland management decision‐making. By assimilating and linking human and environmental data, qualitative and quantitative data, as well as field and remotely sensed data in a spatially explicit framework, such approaches facilitate assessments of both the complexities and place‐specificities inherent to sustainability. In addition, they help represent different stakeholder perspectives, promote communication among scientists from diverse backgrounds as well as between scientific and local experts, facilitate inter‐institutional knowledge sharing, and create synergy between the UNCCD and other Conventions. Due to these benefits as well as the rapid evolution and increasing availability and affordability of geospatial data and technologies in all countries, it is appropriate to begin capitalizing more fully on them now for the M&A of land management sustainability. In order for integrative geospatial approaches to become more central to M&A efforts, however, capacities and infrastructure must be improved and standards and protocols developed for the collection, analysis, and modeling of data, for the evaluation of outputs, and for the reporting of results. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Improving the enabling environment to combat land degradation: Institutional, financial, legal and science‐policy challenges and solutions

AbstractThe need to mainstream land degradation issues into national policies and frameworks is encouraged by international mechanisms such as the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs, 2000). However, mainstreaming has faced a number of interrelated institutional, financial, legal, knowledge and policy barriers. As such, despite 15 years of existence of the UNCCD, successes in reversing and/or preventing land degradation are widely perceived to be limited. This paper highlights the nature of these barriers to mainstreaming and identifies ways in which specific limitations that hamper mainstreaming of land degradation into national, regional and international activities and policies may be overcome. It also identifies institutional infrastructures through which scientific findings may more effectively enter policy, suggesting that scientific bodies are required to strategise, coordinate and stimulate the global scientific research community to support mainstreaming and the up‐scaling of efforts to combat land degradation. Such a scientific body could also stimulate national cross‐sectoral and multi‐stakeholder knowledge exchange. The paper then moves to the national level to examine mainstreaming processes in Namibia, a country particularly advanced in taking a more integrated approach. Although the Namibia case study shows an impressive degree of integration, there are still many lessons to be learned in order to further strengthen mainstreaming processes. These lessons form the basis of our conclusion and recommendations, which outline a potential way forward. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.