CONVENTION TO COMBAT DESERTIFICATION IS FIRST INTERNATIONAL TREATY TO ADDRESS TWIN SCOURGES OF POVERTY AND ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION

7 January 1997

Press Release
ENV/DEV/395

CONVENTION TO COMBAT DESERTIFICATION IS FIRST INTERNATIONAL TREATY TO ADDRESS TWIN SCOURGES OF POVERTY AND ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION

19970107 Representative of IFAD Tells Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Convention

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification is the first international treaty to address poverty and environmental degradation, which are the two most urgent issues facing the world today, a representative of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) told the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on the Convention this afternoon, as it continued its tenth session.

In ratifying the Convention, he stressed, countries were accepting a legal obligation to address those twin scourges for the first time. The Convention was as much about rural development, agricultural growth, and poverty alleviation, as it was about combating desertification. Therefore, it was crucial to include a broad cross-section of actors in the implementation process. Outreach was needed beyond the narrow confines of those concerned only with "anti-desertification", he added.

Speaking for the "Group of 77" developing countries and China, the representative of the United Republic of Tanzania said desertification was a global phenomenon, like climate change. Thus, the Convention should be placed on an equal footing with similar instruments and its financial mechanism must be accorded the same attention and priority. The credibility of the partnership established by the Convention would be found, to a large extent, in the mobilization of new and additional funding and transfer of ecologically sound technologies for the benefit of developing parties to the treaty.

The representative of the Netherlands, speaking for the European Union and associated States, said the definition of the functions of the Global Mechanism should be based on provisions of the Convention, which referred to the promotion of actions leading to the mobilization and channelling of resources. Noting that some countries had stated concern that the implementation of the Convention would require additional resources, he said the Union was willing to discuss ways to take care of those concerns within existing frameworks.

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Also this afternoon, the Minister for the Environment and Water of Burkina Faso said an urgent appeal should be made to the international community to heighten the affected populations' awareness of the Convention. Programmes of partnership in support of the Convention should also be developed through coordination and cooperation.

The Minister for Nature and the Environment of Mongolia called for international assistance for his country to achieve food security. He added that his Government had, since its ratification of the Convention last August, begun to put in place measures to implement its provisions.

Addressing the Committee, the Under-Secretary-General for Policy Coordination and Sustainable Development, Nitin Desai, called for adequate support for the Convention in terms of resources, including finance.

The Committee Chairman, Bo Kjellen (Sweden), said the Convention had created new interest, yet the process would remain an empty shell if the first session of the Conference of the Parties, to be held in Rome in September, did not transform a provisional arrangement into a Convention with functioning institutions.

The Executive Secretary of the Interim Secretariat of the Convention, Hama Arba Diallo, said 60 countries had ratified the Convention as of yesterday, the latest being Argentina and Burundi.

Also making statements were the representatives of Iran, China, Mauritania, Paraguay, Brazil and Guinea. A representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) also spoke, as did a representative of the Norwegian NGO Forum for Development and the Environment, on behalf of the International NGO Network on Desertification.

Further this afternoon, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for the Elaboration of an International Convention to Combat Desertification in Those Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, Particularly in Africa -- as it is formally known -- elected Fassassi Adam Yacoubou (Benin) as Vice-Chairman, completing its bureau.

The Committee postponed action on recommendations for accreditation of 23 non-governmental organizations until its next meeting.

The Committee will meet again at 10 a.m. on Monday, 13 January, to review the progress in its two working groups, consider the offers of Canada, Germany and Spain to host the permanent secretariat of the Convention, and to review extrabudgetary funds for activities to implement the treaty.

Committee Work Programme

The Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for the Elaboration of an International Convention to Combat Desertification in Those Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, Particularly in Africa, met this afternoon to continue its tenth session, which began yesterday. It was expected to complete election of its officers, hear introductory statements and act on requests for accreditation by non-governmental organizations. (For background information on the session, see Press Release ENV/DEV/392, of 3 January.)

Statements

NITIN DESAI, Under-Secretary-General for Policy Coordination and Sustainable Development, noted that the current session was the first meeting of the Committee after the coming into force, on 26 December 1996, of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. Ratification of the Convention by 60 countries indicated the importance attached to it by Member States.

Noting that the Conference of the Parties to the Convention would be held later in the year (from 29 September to 10 October) and that important decisions would be taken then, he assured the Committee that the Department for Policy Coordination and Sustainable Development stood ready to help ensure the smooth transition of the Convention's Interim Secretariat to a permanent one.

He said it was a matter of particular satisfaction that the Convention had been successfully concluded before the five-year mid-term review of Agenda 21, the programme of action adopted by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) (Rio de Janeiro, June 1992). The Convention was also important because it was truly a sustainable instrument that dealt with the core areas of development at the very heart of Agenda 21, basically the integration of environment and development. The parties to the Convention should endeavour to make its implementation an obligation at the national and international levels. He called for adequate support for the Convention in terms of resources, including finance.

He also said the Convention was a test case of the capacity of the parties to implement the ambitious document. It was important to recognize lessons learned in the implementation of earlier instruments. He reminded the Committee of the forthcoming special session of the General Assembly to review implementation of Agenda 21, adding that the outcome of the Committee's tenth session would be an important element in the special session.

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BO KJELLEN (Sweden), Chairman of the Committee, said that by deciding to launch urgent action in Africa, the Convention had created new interest in the situation of the dry lands and triggered different kinds of action. Yet, the process would remain an empty shell if the action in Africa and elsewhere was not pursued with efficiency and if the first session of the Conference of the Parties, to be held in Rome in September, did not transform a provisional arrangement into a convention with functioning institutions. It must be made clear that concrete action would follow as a result of the Committee's negotiations.

Noting that the Global Mechanism established by the Convention raised the general question of transfer of resources, he said that issue would be considered by the Commission on Sustainable Development and in the Assembly's special session in June. An agreement in principle on the hosting organization for the Mechanism would enable consultations before the Conference that would permit rapid implementation of the treaty's provisions and demonstrate to the world that the Convention was off to a promising start.

The Committee's first responsibility was directly linked to the entry into force of the Convention, which occurred on 26 December 1996, he said. The main ground work for the first session of the Conference of the Parties must be made during the current session, and one of the Committee's main objectives should be to make that Conference a success. The coming months would be most important for the Rio follow-up, as the Committee prepared for the special session of the Assembly, which should be able to give political impetus to the Conference of the Parties. The Convention was the clearest example of the participatory approach, and it addressed a central problem of global significance, he concluded.

SALIF DIALLO, Minister for the Environment and Water of Burkina Faso, said all parties to the Convention must recognize that even though it had entered into force, difficulties and drawbacks still existed, especially concerning emergency measures for implementation, which were still very slow. All difficulties and outstanding issues must be ironed out so that the current degree of commitment would be further strengthened by the Convention's implementation in African countries. An urgent appeal should be made to the international community to heighten awareness so that the affected populations might be imbued with the ground-breaking enthusiasm of the Convention and comprehend the widespread scope of the problem of desertification. Programmes of partnership in support of the Convention should also be developed through coordination and cooperation.

The Government of Burkina Faso had developed strategies for the establishment of a forum to prepare a national plan of action for the Convention's implementation and to seek the necessary consensus in that regard, he said. In June 1997, the first meeting would be held to discuss

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public awareness programmes, organization and development of strategies and preparation for implementation of the treaty. The establishment of new types of partnerships among organizations, both internal and external, should be formed in order to make the Convention a model.

The Global Mechanism was a very important element in the Convention, he said, stressing the need to mobilize the necessary funds, without which the Convention could not be implemented and its effects would be merely piecemeal. He pledged his Government's determination to work towards a consensus on the issues of importance to Burkina Faso.

TSOHIOGIIN ADJSUREN, Minister for Nature and the Environment of Mongolia, called for international assistance for his country to achieve food security. He also called for international cooperation, including resources, to support national efforts in combating desertification and drought conditions. His Government had, since its ratification of the Convention last August, begun to put in place measures to implement its provisions. A national sustainable development council had successfully implemented a number of programmes to achieve sustainable development, including combating desertification.

HAMA ARBA DIALLO, Executive Secretary of the Convention's Interim Secretariat, said that 60 countries had already ratified the Convention, the latest being Argentina and Burundi. The first session of the Conference of the Parties would now take place in Rome and he thanked the Government of Italy for offering to host the first session. He also thanked the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for its offer of facilities for the first session of the Conference. He then introduced the various documents before the Committee.

Reporting on measures taken by the Interim Secretariat to facilitate urgent measures for Africa, he said it had helped a number of countries prepare the framework for the implementation of the Convention. Algeria, among others, had organized national activities to implement the Convention. Libya was in touch with the Interim Secretariat on the preparation of national workshops. Many African States were at different stages of implementing the Convention. Senegal and Burkina Faso had announced their intention to organize national forums in the first quarter of the year. Activities were also taking place at the subregional level involving bodies such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC). He also referred to the "dynamic cooperation" among various regional intergovernmental bodies in carrying out pilot projects. Important initiatives were also being taken in Africa, including consultations on the implementation of a regional plan of action.

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Turning to actions taken in other regions, he said many countries, a number of them in Central America, had conveyed to the Interim Secretariat their wish to organize workshops, seminars and other programmes on the Convention. The Interim Secretariat would, as in Africa, help them carry out their plans. A regional level meeting was planned for Havana, Cuba, to discuss regional programmes. Similar work was being done in a number of Asian countries, including Armenia and Syria, which planned national seminars. Many countries like India, Mongolia and Georgia had indicated to the Interim Secretariat their interest in organizing programmes. A meeting had been scheduled for May in Beijing on implementing a regional plan of action. Subregional meetings were also planned elsewhere in Asia.

Turning to work being done in the Northern Mediterranean region with the support of the Interim Secretariat, he said a meeting had recently been held in Brussels on further European Union support for the work of non-governmental organizations in developing countries in implementing the Convention. Stressing that the Interim Secretariat alone could not meet the increasing requests for assistance, he thanked the States which had supported it in meeting those requests.

ELLEN JOHNSON SIRLEAF, Assistant Administrator and Director for Africa of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)/Office to Combat Desertification and Drought (UNSO), said that with the Convention entering into force, the international community had been presented with exciting possibilities which must be transformed into purposeful actions. At the local, national and global levels, action must be taken to vigorously confront the twin scourges of drought and desertification, which had devastated the livelihoods of millions of people around the world for so long.

Since the adoption of the Convention, the UNDP had intensified its effort to support the existing action taken by affected developing countries and adopted a flexible approach to better respond to expressed needs, she said. In Africa, for example, the Programme, particularly through UNSO, was providing support for the launching of national action programmes in 15 countries, and those support activities were different for each country.

She said the Convention's most attractive features were its decentralization and interactive nature, the focus on participatory processes and the emphasis placed on nurturing creative problem-solving approaches at the local level. The Convention empowered communities to seek solutions to the constraints they faced in their daily struggles against drought and desertification. In order for the Convention to be successful, all parties must move to a common ground based on shared commitments and responsibilities between government, civil society and external partners for the benefit of all groups which had a stake in the dry lands. The new approach to partnership- building referred to in the Convention could only work if all parties

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understood that the process could often be filled with conflict, involved compromise, and required the sharing of benefits and risks. A key challenge in partnership-building at the national level would be the identification of the main stakeholders, particularly dry-land populations, who were often politically powerless and traditionally marginalized in national policy processes, and building their capacity to take part in national action programme dialogues on an equal footing with government and other stakeholders.

SHIGEAKI TOMITA, Assistant President of the Economic Policy and Resource Strategy Department of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), said the Convention was the first international treaty to address poverty and environmental degradation, which were the two most urgent issues facing the world. In ratifying the Convention, countries were accepting a legal obligation to address those twin scourges for the first time. The Convention was as much about rural development, agricultural growth and poverty alleviation, as it was about combating desertification. Therefore, it was crucial to include a broad cross-section of actors in the implementation process. Outreach was needed beyond the narrow confines of those concerned only with "anti-desertification", and that was why IFAD was negotiating with financial institutions, ministers of finance and agriculture, and parliamentarians around the world. The aim of IFAD was to mainstream the Convention so it could provide added value and coherence to the array of existing and planned activities in the dry lands.

The Fund had also launched a programme on "incentives for natural resource management" to assist countries in that dimension of their national action programmes, he said. That programme would assist affected countries in strengthening incentive structures for making resource conservation profitable to farmers and others in dry-land areas. The importance of incentives could not be overestimated, because it was the dry-land populations that would ultimately make the greatest investments in enhancing the resource base. The reversal of dry-land degradation could only take place through the cumulative impact of thousands of decisions by thousands of farmers and pastoralists throughout the dry lands. Externally financed programmes could only facilitate -- and not be substitute for -- investment and action.

DAUDI N. MWAKAWAGO (United Republic of Tanzania), speaking on behalf of the "Group of 77" developing countries and China, said the test of the credibility of the partnership established by the Convention would be found, to a large extent, in the mobilization of new and additional funding and transfer of ecologically sound technologies for the benefit of developing countries. The establishment of a financial Global Mechanism provided for in the Convention would be an important first step towards the adoption of measures to combat desertification.

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He reiterated that desertification was a global phenomenon on an equal footing with problems affecting the ozone layer and climate change. The Convention to Combat Desertification could not be relegated to a second-class international legal instrument, and its proposed financial Global Mechanism should be accorded the same attention and priority as those of other Conventions.

He said the Committee should also formulate concrete recommendations to the Conference of the Parties on mobilization of substantive new and additional resources and technology transfer if the Convention were to become an operational instrument to halt and reverse desertification. He called for support for the Convention's secretariat and urged governments to increase their financial contributions to it to enable developing countries to fully participate in the first session of the Conference of the Parties. Desertification spared no continent. In Africa, desertification affected more than 40 countries, swallowing up every year approximately 6 million hectares of land, he said, stressing the need for an early international consensus on specific measures to assist affected countries.

HANS HOOGEVEEN (Netherlands), speaking on behalf of the European Union and Cyprus, Iceland, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic and Slovenia, said that reaching consensus on the definition of the functions of the Global Mechanism would be one of the major challenges of the current session. The European Union believed that the definition of those functions should be based on the relevant provisions in the Convention, which stated that the Global Mechanism should promote actions leading to the mobilization and channelling of resources. However, some countries had stated concern that the implementation of the Convention would require the mobilization of additional resources, and the European Union was willing to discuss the ways in which those concerns could be taken care of within existing frameworks.

While the final decision of the physical location of the permanent secretariat could only be made during the first session of the Conference of the Parties, progress could be made in determining the procedures that would lead to such a decision, he said. Without prejudice to other bids, the European Union would welcome a decision to place the permanent secretariat in one of its member States. The Union was also now prepared to make a recommendation to the first Conference of the Parties regarding the institutional linkage of the permanent secretariat.

The European Union attached particular importance to the Convention because the problems it addressed affected the lives of millions who coped daily with the consequences of desertification and drought, he said. Therefore, the Union hoped that all necessary preparations would be made for the full implementation of the Convention before the Assembly's special session on the implementation of Agenda 21.

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MICHAEL ANGSTREICH, of the Norwegian NGO Forum for Development and the Environment, speaking on behalf of the International Non-governmental Organization Network on Desertification, said those organizations had been networking, raising awareness and implementing in the field the "spirit and substance" of the Convention. National programmes were the key operational tools to transform the Convention's provisions into concrete action and to implement measures to combat desertification. An important part of that process was the consultative mechanism that enabled various interest groups to identify the factors contributing to desertification and the practical measures necessary to combat it.

He called upon all concerned governments to immediately set in motion genuine consultative mechanisms. He hoped that agreement would be reached on the Global Mechanism provided for in the Convention during the current session of the Committee. On the matter of funding and other resources, he said countries should make more effective use of existing resources. He added, however, that there was no escaping the fact that substantial new funding and other additional resources were absolutely necessary to combat drought and desertification. The composition of the permanent secretariat of the Convention should reflect the qualitative and quantitative needs that it would have to address, he concluded.

SERAIDOON KHAKPOUR (Iran) said his Government had ratified the Convention, and the instruments would be deposited soon with the Secretary- General.

XUE HANQIN (China) said the Convention was an important international instrument for environmental protection. The Chinese Government attached great importance to the Convention. Through intensive efforts, the National People's Congress had ratified the Convention on 30 December 1996, and the instruments would soon be deposited. Her Government hoped that more countries would ratify or accede to the Convention to ensure a better future for mankind.

AHMED SALAM OULD AHMED (Mauritania) said the Convention's entry into force was important, but not sufficient. The suffering of the over 1 billion people who felt the adverse effects of desertification would not be alleviated unless the Convention was implemented in full. The international community must redouble its efforts so the Convention could become a tangible reality. The parties must agree on the pending points so important decisions could be made at the first session of the Conference of the Parties. Unfortunately, the number of ratifications by developed countries were still low. A renewed appeal must be made to developed countries to express support for developing countries by ratifying the Convention.

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JOSÉ EMILIO GOROSTIAGA (Paraguay) said the legislature of Paraguay had ratified the Convention, and the instrument of ratification would be deposited in the very near future.

FLAVIO GOLDMAN (Brazil) said the Convention was being examined by the Commission on Justice, which was the last commission in the legislative sphere of his Government. It should be ratified before the end of June.

MOHAMED LAMINE DOYUMBOUYA (Guinea) said the legislature of Guinea had approved the Convention, and instruments of ratification would be transmitted to the depositary before the end of January.

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