DON’T DESERT DRYLANDS
UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME
MESSAGE ON WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY
5 June, 2006
The dry and delicate landscapes that
we call deserts are among the world’s
most spectacular, harsh and beautiful.
They support a specialized diversity
of life, including some of humankind’s
most ancient cultures. On all continents,
with the exception of uninhabited Antarctica,
communities that live in or around deserts
represent a direct link to knowledge,
history and traditions that are increasingly
imperilled by the dual pressures of
globalization and environmental decline.
Deserts, and the cultures that have
learned to live in harmony with them,
are an important part of humanity’s
heritage. Desertification, on the other
hand, is the manifestation of a multitude
of destructive factors – almost
all caused or made worse by human activity
– that together represent one
of the greatest challenges to environmental
sustainability, human security and the
achievement of internationally agreed
development goals.
There is a fine line between dryland
and desert—one which once crossed
is hard to return from. It is vastly
more cost-effective to prevent dryland
degradation than to reverse it. It is
therefore essential to focus on policies
and technologies that will protect the
world’s arid, semiarid and dry
subhumid areas. These areas, where rainfall
is low and evaporation is high, may
be fragile, but if managed well they
are also fertile and capable of supporting
the habitats, crops and livestock that
sustain nearly one-third of humanity.
The fact that more than half the world’s
productive land is dryland emphasizes
the critical importance of wise management
at the global, national and local level.
Impoverished land and impoverished people
are two sides of the same coin.To raise
public awareness about desertification,
and to help to preserve dryland and
desert communities, and the biological
diversity on which they depend, the
UN General Assembly declared 2006 the
International Year of Deserts and Desertification.
In support of the International Year,
UNEP chose the theme ‘Don’t
Desert Drylands’ for World Environment
Day 2006. The degradation of drylands
is a global problem, but it is perhaps
most acute in Africa, the least developed
region of the world and the most vulnerable
to environmental change. The host city
for World Environment Day 2006 is Algiers,
capital of Algeria. With its geography,
history and culture inextricably bound
with the world’s greatest and
best-known desert, the Sahara, and with
its Environment Minister, Chérif
Rahmani, the UN’s honorary spokesman
for the International Year of Deserts
and Desertification, the country is
ideally situated to highlight every
facet of this complex issue.
Each year, on 5 June, World Environment
Day provides an opportunity for communities
and governments around the world to
reflect on the essential role that the
environment plays in our daily lives
and our plans for the future. As the
UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment has
highlighted, more than 60 per cent of
the world’s ecosystems are in
decline or even degraded to an extent
that we can no longer rely on their
services. These include the world’s
drylands, as well as forests, fisheries
and even the air that we breathe. It
is plain that, despite increasing knowledge
and a growing list of political agreements
and commitments, humankind continues
to squander our natural capital.
For example, it is estimated that desertification
and drought account for a $42 billion
annual loss in food productivity worldwide.
On top of this figure is the uncountable
cost in human suffering and lives lost
due to hunger and the need to abandon
once productive land. These statistics
are not only disturbing, they are preventable.
This too, is the message of World Environment
Day. As well as highlighting problems,
each year the Day draws attention to
the many available remedies.
Throughout its existence, UNEP has emphasized
the importance of preventing and reversing
land degradation. It played an integral
role in establishing the UN Convention
to Combat Desertification and is working
alongside partners such as the UN Food
and Agriculture Organization, the UN
Development Programme and the Global
Environment Facility, to implement it.
UNEP has also gathered a comprehensive
collection of success stories in the
struggle against desertification in
Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin
America and the Caribbean, which together
demonstrate that appropriate, replicable
technological and policy solutions exist
to address the challenges of the drylands.
The degradation of drylands is a growing
problem that needs imaginative, collaborative
and multi-sectoral action. It is both
a result of and a contributor to climate
change; it is both the cause and the
consequence of poverty. If left unchecked
it threatens the future food security
of humanity’s steadily growing
population and the stability of communities
and countries in all regions. Therefore,
on this World Environment Day, UNEP’s
message to the world is ‘Don’t
Desert Drylands!’.
UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME
www.unep.org
