by Ben Block on July 9, 2008

 

Photo courtesy UNCCD

Barriers made from local vegetation are erected to halt the spread of sand dunes. Desertification and other forms of land degradation now affect nearly a quarter of the world’s land resources.

Land degradation is becoming worse in severity and extent across many regions of the world, with croplands, in particular, declining in function and productivity, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said in a new report.

 

Prior to the release of the report last Wednesday, U.N. Environment Program-funded research had estimated that between 10 and 20 percent of the world's 1.5 billion hectares of cropland suffered from some level of degradation. Now, using satellite imagery for the years between 1981 and 2003, the FAO researchers estimate that 24 percent of all land surface area is depleted.

Despite the world undergoing a crisis of food supply shortages, funding and research dedicated to global land degradation is sparse. In this report, the FAO called for individuals, communities, and governments to dedicate "renewed attention" to the state of the world's soil, citing food security and climate change mitigation as reasons for concern.

Consequences of land degradation include reduced productivity, farmer migration, food insecurity, ecosystem failure, and biodiversity decline.

Cropland occupies only 12 percent of global land area, but it accounted for 20 percent of the land considered degraded. When this occurs, the poor often struggle to raise enough money for the fertilizers that could avoid reduced yields.

Farming methods are generally the cause for degradation. Excessive tillage and removal of vegetation often encourage soil erosion by exposing the soil to rain and wind. Overgrazing by cattle and the build-up of salt on irrigated land are major contributors, as well.

Degradation has historically been considered a problem of tropical, developing nations. Sub-Saharan Africa is still most severely affected. The region contains 13 percent of global degraded area, while nations such as Swaziland are almost entirely located on degraded soil.

The degradation that has occurred over the past 23 years, however, mostly affects new areas. According to the report, nations such as China, Argentina, and South Africa are now facing greater problems than before.

More assessment of land degradation has become crucial, the authors noted. "Quantitative, up-to-date information is needed to support policy development for food and water security, environmental integrity, and economic development," the report said.

The study follows the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development's April report that called for a worldwide "paradigm shift" towards more sustainable agriculture. Among the suggestions, it called for government support of small-scale irrigation and greenwater technologies for degraded croplands, such as in Sub-Saharan Africa.

A 1994 UN Convention to Combat Desertification, signed by 191 nations, agreed to promote sustainable development in affected areas. But funding has so far been lacking. Following a conference last year, 70 non-governmental organizations said "constant passiveness" and "absences of intervention" by signatory nations have stalled progress on land degradation.

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Wed Jul 2, 2008 11:47am BST

Mon Jun 2, 2008 5:54am EDT By Robin Pomeroy

© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

In the case of wheat, for instance, as a deadly new strain of Black Stem Rust devastates harvests across Africa and Arabia, and threatens the staple food supply of a billion people from Egypt to Pakistan, the areas where potentially crop and life-saving remnant wild wheat relatives grow are only minimally protected.

“Our basic food plants have always been vulnerable to attack from new strains of disease or pests and the result is often mass hunger and starvation, as anyone who remembers their school history of the Irish Potato Famine will know,” said Liza Higgins-Zogib, Manager of People and Conservation at WWF International.

“In more recent times we have avoided similar collapses in the production when disease strikes essential foodstuffs like wheat by developing new commercial varieties from naturally resistant wild relatives.”

“Unfortunately the natural habitat of most of the wild or traditional descendents of our modern food plants is without legal and physical protection, leaving them at risk.”

Also at risk are the indigenous and traditional peoples who are critical parts of the landscapes associated with crop wild relatives, who are losing their lands and cultural practices — which puts humanity's food at even further risk.

Wheat and barley originated in an arc mainly to the north of the Fertile Crescent (modern day Iraq) where their domestication was linked with the development by early Mesopotamian civilizations of cities, irrigation and laws. Ecoregions such as the Eastern Anatolian montane steppe, where wheat's wild relatives remain, now combine low levels of critical habitat in protected areas (3.14 per cent) with alarming levels of habitat loss (55.6 per cent).

The map Centres of food crop diversity threatened and under protected correlates updated protected area statistics with key Crop Wild Relative (CWR) areas and draws on a study conducted by WWF, environmental research group Equilibrium and the School of Biosciences at the University of Birmingham, published as Food Stores: Using protected areas to secure crop genetic diversity in 2006.

Other crops where levels of protection for remnant crop wild relatives fall below five percent include rice varieties in Bangladesh, homelands for lentils, peas, grapes and almonds, and areas of Spain where a protected area ratio of 4.6% significant for wild olive relatives is mismatched by the loss of almost three quarters of all habitat.

The Americas fare slightly better, but important areas of agrobiodiversity including areas where corn originated and important to wild relatives of the potato are less than 10 % protected.

“The wild relatives of commercial crops provide a critical reserve of genes that are regularly needed to strengthen and adapt their modern domestic cousins in a changing world,” Higgins-Zogib said.

“We already have reserves and national parks to protect charismatic species like pandas and tigers, and to preserve outstanding areas of natural beauty. It is now time to offer protection to the equally valuable wild and traditional relatives of the plants that feed the world like rice, wheat and potatoes.


“And because people are part of landscapes too, we urge conservationists and governments thinking of new protected areas to allow the full and effective participation of indigenous peoples — particularly the women who have traditionally been the gardeners and seedkeepers of their communities.”

By Nergui Manalsuren (Inter Press Services) 

UNITED NATIONS, May 19, 2008 - “A rolling tsunami of social unrest is underway as we speak — hungry people are desperate people capable of taking desperate actions. This tsunami is rapidly enveloping the global South, and it won’t take much longer before it knocks at the door of the global North,” warned Vicente Garcia-Delgado, the U.N. representative for CIVICUS, the world alliance for citizen participation.

At a forum on the world food crisis held at the United Nations Friday, civil society groups stressed that over 800 million people are now at risk of starvation, while 100 million have joined the ranks of the extremely poor in just the last few months and are now living on less than a dollar a day.

The food price index of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation rose by 9 percent in 2006 and 23 percent in 2007. As of March this year, wheat and maize prices were 130 and 30 percent higher than a year earlier. Rice prices have more than doubled since late January.

A new briefing this week by the U.N. Economic and Social Council says that the poor, especially in urban areas but also the rural landless and small farmers who are net food buyers, have been most vulnerable to food price hikes, as a very high proportion of their household income is spent on food.

However, “Even within rich countries, increasingly large portions of the population are having real problems bringing food to the table and paying for other basic necessities,” Garcia-Delgado said.

He stressed that the peace and security challenges presented by the hunger crisis and climate change must be understood as global challenges, calling for global solutions that address the concerns of all nations and peoples.

“Governments must not fall prey to the temptation to seek unilateral solutions based on defensive or militaristic non-solutions. It would be extremely dangerous to look at the current crisis strictly from a national perspective. A knee-jerk resort to a ‘fortress America’ or a ‘fortress Europe’ type of mentality would only exacerbate the risks of social and political chaos and will not work,” Garcia-Delgado said.

Asma Lateef, director of bread for the World Institute, a Christian grassroots advocacy organisation that lobbies on issues of hunger and poverty in the United States and around the world, said that rising global food prices are being driven by at least four structural changes.

According to Lateef, one factor is growing demand for food and diversified diets, including meat, in many developing countries as people have begun to escape poverty and seen a rise in their incomes.

Secondly, she pointed out the competition for land use and diversion of crops posed by biofuels; thirdly, weather-related crop failures possibly associated with climate change, for example, the decline in wheat production due to an extended drought in Australia; and lastly, rising oil prices, as all contributing to food inflation.

Lateef called on donors, including the U.S., to strive to get the maximum benefit out of food aid resources by reducing restrictions on the procurement and shipping of food aid.

She stressed that the current food aid system must be well resourced, efficient, and flexible because “the capacity of the food aid system is being severely tested as the world tries to cope with this crisis, the recent disasters in Myanmar and China and ongoing humanitarian efforts.”

“Furthermore, countries need to be encouraged to relax or avoid export restrictions on food. This only exacerbates the global problem. We need to take a global approach,” she said.

“Special lines of credit and guarantees should be also made available to enable net food importing countries to meet the needs of poor people and continue to purchase food on international markets, in ways that do not raise debt burdens or impose more than the minimum conditionality,” Lateef said.

Alan Imai, co-director of Shumei International Institute, who shared his successful experiences working with a women farmers’ cooperative in Zambia, added that in addition to immediate action, the international community needs to consider long-term solutions that will lead to sustainable food production and economic development.

He also stressed the importance of empowerment of local communities and involving them in decision-making. “The United Nations, governments and other involved organisations must consult with, trust, and listen to local farmers in order to empower them toward self sufficiency, instead of depending on a few scientists and companies, whose motives and perspective cannot be the same as those who are running out of food,” Imai said.

Garcia-Delgado said that there is certainly the temptation to cry out “We told you so!”

“Years of foot-dragging, unkept promises, endless negotiations, a slow response to climate change, and the refusal to harness market globalisation — these are some of the principal reasons which have brought us to the sorry predicament we find ourselves at the beginning of the 21st century,” he said.

© 2008 Inter Press Service