Protecting land, protecting life

Joe Capua in Voice of America: A top U.N. advisor said on Friday that every minute, 23 hectares of land are degraded by drought and desertification. He said it’s damaging the economic, social and environmental pillars needed for sustainable development.

Luc Gnacadja, executive secretary of the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification, the UNCCD, was among those attending a meeting in the southwestern Algerian town of Tinerkouk. The meeting marked the Decade for Deserts and the fight against desertification.

Speaking from Tinerkouk – a desert area – Gnacadja said natural desert ecosystems are valuable and must be conserved – but man-made deserts must be avoided. He warned that land degradation – also known a desertification – is a global problem “It is undermining our capacity to address the issue of poverty, our capacity to mitigate climatic drought,’ he said.

Land degradation,’ he said, threatens aquifers that are needed for biomass – a mass of biological organisms living in a particular area. It also increases environmentally induced migration and puts food security at risk. He called the protection of arable land a “blind spot” in the climate change debate...

The Tassili desert in Algeria, shot by magharebia, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license