International Year of Deserts & Desertification (IYDD 2006)

 

The United Nations General Assembly, at its 58th session, adopted resolution A/Res/58/211 which declares 2006 the International Year of Deserts and Desertification. The decision was taken to help prevent the exacerbation of desertification around the globe. The General Assembly invites all countries, international and civil society organizations to celebrate the Year 2006 and to support public awareness activities related to desertification and land degradation.

 

The main objective of the year is to get the message across that desertification is a major threat to humanity, compounded by both climate change and loss of biological diversity. Land degradation affects one third of the planet's land surface and around one billion people in over a hundred countries.

 

While fully addressing the growing threat that desertification represents for mankind, the year also seeks to celebrate the unique ecosystem and cultural diversity of deserts worldwide, therefore establishing a clear difference between the need to protect deserts as unique natural habitat and the fight against desertification as a global sustainable development challenge. As the main agency for the year, the UNCCD Secretariat is launching a unique logo for the year and inviting stakeholders to make use of it. The logo is intended to promote all awareness activities related to the year, as well as to represent the dual issues at stake in one single image: Deserts as natural ecosystems and the issue of desertification as a global problem. With UNCCD, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, the international community possesses a key instrument to deliver the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that must be met by 2015. The MDGs are the most comprehensive and ambitious strategy ever put forward to combat global poverty.

 

The Convention

The international community has long recognized that desertification is a major economic, social and environmental problem of concern to many countries in all regions of the world. In 1977, the United Nations Conference on Desertification (UNCOD) adopted a Plan of Action to Combat Desertification (PACD). Unfortunately, despite this and other efforts, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) concluded in 1991 that the problem of land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas had intensified, although there were "local examples of success".

 

As a result, the question of how to tackle desertification was still a major concern for theUnited Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), which was held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The Conference supported a new, integrated approach to the problem, emphasizing action to promote sustainable development at the community level. It also called on the United Nations General Assembly to establish an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INCD) to prepare, by June 1994, a Convention to Combat Desertification, particularly in Africa. In December 1992, the General Assembly agreed and adopted resolution 47/188.

 

Working to a tight schedule, the Committee completed its negotiations in five sessions. The Convention was adopted in Paris on 17 June 1994 and opened for signature there on 14-15 October 1994. It entered into force on 26 December 1996, 90 days after the fiftieth ratification was received. Over 179 countries were Parties as at March 2002. The Conference of the Parties (COP), which is the Convention's supreme governing body, held its first session in October 1997 in Rome, Italy; the second in December 1998 in Dakar, Senegal; the third in November 1999 in Recife, Brazil; the fourth in December 2000 in Bonn, Germany; and the fifth in October 2001 in Geneva, Switzerland. As of 2001, COP sessions will be held on a biennial basis.

source: http://www.unccd.int/publicinfo/iyddlogo/menu.php