PRESS CONFERENCE ON CONVENTION TO COMBAT DESERTIFICATION

12 September 1996

Press Briefing

19960912 FOR INFORMATION OF UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT ONLY

Only five more ratifications were needed for the International Convention to Combat Desertification to enter into force, correspondents were told today at a joint press conference by Hama Arba Diallo, Executive Secretary of the Convention's Interim Secretariat, and Bo Kjellen (Sweden), Chairman of the Convention's Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee.

Desertification and the degradation of arid land were not peripheral issues, Mr. Kjellen said. Some 900 million to 1 billion people were living in dry-land areas, which constituted some 25 per cent of global land area. The negotiating process leading to the Convention had begun with Agenda 21, the programme of action adopted by the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), which had become the "bible" of the environment-and-development instruments signed after the Rio Conference. African countries, and many other developing countries, considered Agenda 21 to be one of the most significant results of UNCED.

The Committee completed its work with the adoption of the Convention in June 1994, Mr. Kjellen said. Some 115 countries were now signatories and 45 of the 50 ratifications required for its entry into force had been received. The Convention had several unique features. It was a "new style" agreement, directed towards establishing a process which would consist primarily of national action programmes, "and not plans", he stressed. Those programmes would be based on participation at the local level and by women; no other document emerging from the Rio Conference had so underlined those ideas.

The Convention also provided for improved coordination between donor countries and affected countries, he continued. It established a broad policy framework which embraced land and water management, socio-economic considerations such as land tenure and other elements related to land ownership. The Convention also established a sound platform for research and new technology.

The Committee's current session would not be its last, he said. It would meet once more at approximately this time next year. Under the Convention, the Committee was obliged to meet once during the year following its entry into force; that meeting would most likely take place at Rome.

During the current session important negotiations on scientific and technical cooperation had taken place, he said. The session had also seen the establishment of a roster of experts. Discussion of the new Global Mechanism which would facilitate the mobilization of resources for combating

desertification had taken place, as had discussion of rules of procedure, financial rules and other "housekeeping issues". The Committee had also seen presentations on national action programmes, which were already under way.

The Committee was now considering three very good offers of a site for the Convention's permanent secretariat, Mr. Kjellen said: Montreal, Bonn and Murcia, Spain.

A correspondent asked why the Convention was taking so long to achieve 50 ratifications. Mr. Kjellen said that he did not think that those ratifications were taking so long. The Law of the Sea Convention had not entered into force until a decade after its signature, he noted, adding parliamentary procedures were always slow. Four countries had deposited their instruments of ratification during the current session. Once 50 ratifications had been received, countries wishing to participate in the Conference of the Parties would have to deliver their instruments within 90 days of the Convention's entry into force.

To a question on the Convention's funding mechanism, Mr. Kjellen said that in sister conventions, it had been decided that the Global Environment Facility (GEF) would be the financial mechanism. In the case of the Desertification Convention, the final compromise had been the creation of the Global Mechanism, which would not be the sole channel for funding. In the case of dry-land projects, important programmes were already under way. The challenge was to channel additional funding towards those efforts.

During negotiations in the current session, there had been far-reaching agreement on the functions of the Global Mechanism, he continued. It was now more clear how active its role should be in mobilizing new resources. That was an issue that would last through the first meeting of the Conference of the Parties. It had been decided in the Convention that the Global Mechanism should be attached to an existing organization. During the current session, the Committee had agreed upon criteria for deciding which organization that would be -- either the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) or the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

A correspondent then asked why the Convention's secretariat would not be based in Africa. Mr. Kjellen said that countries had been asked to submit their candidatures, and the Committee was considering those candidates. A contact group had been established to meet with the three candidate countries. Having been the head of administration for the Swedish Foreign Service, he knew the difficult problems involved with moving personnel. The Convention's Interim Secretariat was located in Geneva, and many of those people would be moving over to the permanent secretariat. That transfer procedure should take place as rapidly as possible, taking into consideration matters such as housing and schools.

Desertification Press Conference - 2 - 12 September 1996

Mr. Diallo said that the solution to the problem should turn on how the secretariat could best function, while interacting at the international level either with the secretariats of other conventions or with the international community as a whole. Dry-land issues were global environmental concerns; the best site might have been in Africa, but no African country had offered to host the secretariat. Mr. Kjellen added that the real action of any body was on the ground; the secretariat was just the intermediary. The commitment contained in the Convention for action at the local level was an essential part of its decentralized nature.

A correspondent then asked for information on the Convention's treatment of land tenure issues. Mr. Kjellen said that while the Convention was not a "revolutionary document", it did contain language with regard to national action programmes which touched on socio-economic issues. The relationship between women's right to own land and their access to credit were the types of issues being raised. Once those ideas were under discussion they could not be "put back into a box", he said.

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