Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Who Cares About Drylands and Desertification?

The issues of drought and desertification will be discussed at this session of the CSD. One would have thought that other NGOs and governmental officials involved in the negotiations of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) would be present at this session. However, this is not the case. One then wonders what the role of the CSD is with regard to Rio conventions such as the UNCCD.

By: Patrice Burger, CARI, eniD, and Drynet; and Lauren Naville, Drylands Coordination Group and eniD

At the last Conference of the Parties (COP8 in Madrid) of the UNCCD, an important decision was taken, namely the adoption of a 10 year strategic plan for the implementation of the convention. This strategy will be further discussed at the next meeting of the Committee for the Review of the Implementation of the Convention (CRIC) in November especially in terms of establishing a monitoring system. Discussions today will focus among other issues on drought and desertification. It will be interesting to see if the knowledge that has been gathered during the numerous CRIC and COP sessions as well as the objectives of the new strategy will be taken into account in the discussions.

In addition we must say that almost 90 % of what has been said on rural development, poverty, drylands, women, rural poverty, access to markets, etc. during the opening day of the CSD is more or less the same that has been said during years in the UNCCD process. At the same time, very few of the delegates following the UNCCD process have in our opinion attended the CSD-16 on this subject. One of the consequences is the pursuit of confusions about what desertification means as a process of land degradation and not only the movement of sand dunes.

We believe that this case is an example of both the lack of stocktaking of the former discussions and lack of synergy between various UN processes. We then wonder what the role of civil society can be in creating more links and thus increasing the efficiency of our work in terms of environment and development at an international level. This is why for example, we, as the European networking initiative on Desertification (eniD) have decided to attend this cycle of the CSD and to make sure that discussions and decisions taken at the UNCCD meetings are reflected in the chair’s report as well as in the policies. We have also come here in order to extend our partnerships and meet NGOs involved in the CSD process and to see how we could collaborate with them in our advocacy oriented work. So please do not hesitate to contact us!

Patrice Burger, cariassociation@yahoo.fr
Lauren Naville, info@drylands-group.org