Islamabad :Climate Change Minister Mushahidullah Khan warned that the rapidly expanding desertification is eating into vast tracks of rich fertile land and thus, posing a greater risk to the global environmental sustainability, food security and social and economic stability in different countries including Pakistan.
He said afforestation, sustainable animal grazing, rainwater harvesting programmes and effective monitoring systems could effectively help fight desertification.
“Desertification is a silent, invisible crisis of land degradation, a global phenomenon, which is one of the humanity’s most pressing problems that undermines efforts to achieve food
security, secure livelihoods, social stability and health and economic development goals,” he said on while addressing at a high-level ministerial segment of the UN-led international Convention on Desertification being held n Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China.
The 13th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 13) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) being held from September 6-17, 2017 is an annual event.
Government delegations from around 195 countries have assembled at the 13th desertification convention to decide on the global strategic framework that will guide global `desertification combating action’ under the Convention from 2018-2030.
The minister is currently leading an official delegation at the UN Convention, who highlighted issues of desertification, land degradation and land erosion, which have exacerbated in Pakistan because of global warming-induced climate change.
He said tackling desertification, which was fast devouring fertile lands and exacerbated by overgrazing, deforestation and groundwater reserves and surface water runoff, must be recognised now as a critical and essential part of adaptation to climate change and mitigation of global biodiversity and food production losses.
One-third of all people on Earth – about 2 billion in number – were potential victims. The minister urged the government delegations and civil society members from 195 counties at the UN Convention to treat desertification as an agricultural, social and economic problem instead of sidelining it as an environmental issue.
Drawing global community’s attention at the desertification convention, he said tackling desertification requires the international community to jointly roll out a viable global policy mechanism to cope growing desertification, which pose grave risks to the sustainability of lives and livelihoods of nearly two billion people, who live in arid and semi-arid areas and rely on land resources for the food and income.
He said like in many African and Asia-Pacific countries, desertification had emerged as a major socioeconomic and environmental challenge in Pakistan, devouring vast tracks of rich fertile lands and risking country’s food security efforts.
“Pakistan is facing with daunting challenges of combating desertification, with more than 80 percent of the land classified as arid and semi-arid and severely affected by desertification, land degradation and recurring droughts. The drylands of Balochistan, Sindh, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, and Punjab face increasing land degradation and desertification,” he said.
The minister said as Pakistan’s population grows and the effects of climate change take hold, desertification has become a major source of concern for the country’s fragile ecosystem.
“Pakistan’s agricultural land is vulnerable to desertification – the process by which arable land becomes desert due to drought, deforestation, inappropriate agricultural practices, the effects of climate change, or a combination of all of these,” he added.
He also appraised the participants that as part of global efforts to combat desertification and drought, second phase of the five-year ambitious Sustainable Land Management Programme (SLMP) was being implemented in Pakistan’s desertification-hit districts. The project for 2015-2020 was being supported by the Global Environment Facility and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Mushahidullah said the SLMP was aimed at implementing United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification and implementing sustainable land management practices over entire landscapes in arid and semi-arid landscapes.
"The initiative is supporting the development of comprehensive land use policies, providing training to individuals and institutions across Pakistan, and helping develop district and village level land use plans to improve practices at the local level,” he said.
He said the UN’s Food and Agriculture (FAO) agency had already warned that desertification could displace 135 million people across the world including Pakistan by 2030, unless action is taken to restore and rehabilitate degraded land.
He suggested that encouraging pastoral communities to do things such as use new techniques to conserve underground water, manage their livestock more efficiently and protect local biodiversity can all go a long way to addressing the problems of desertification and sustainable land management.