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High populations can
prevent deserts, say activists
By Pratap
Chatterjee
GENEVA, March 26 (IPS) - High local
populations can prevent deserts if they are armed
with the right incentives and laws, activists here
have told delegates preparing an international
convention to combat desertification.
Discussions for an international convention on
desertification to be signed in Paris this June are
currently being held here to in Geneva and are
intended to tackle the slow destruction of lands in
99 countries affecting almost a billion people.
The problem of desertification and land
degradation is particularly acute in Africa.
Swedish hydrologist Malin Falkenmark, says that one
country, Tunisia, is beyond what she calls the
water barrier -- with supplies of less than the
bare minimum 500 cubic metres of water per capita
per year.
She estimates that by the end of the century 11
African countries with a total population of 250
million people will be beyond the water barrier. By
the year 2025 this will rise to 1.1 billion people
or two-thirds of Africa's population.
At a panel discussion hosted by the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) on Thursday,
Mary Tiffen, a British researcher, told delegates
about her new book, which is titled 'More People,
Less Erosion'.
The book, which is published by the Overseas
Development Institute in London, is a study of the
Mechakos region of Kenya, south-east of Nairobi,
which shows that the people themselves are the
solution and not the problem.
Her studies showed that between the years 1937
and 1993, the output of land in Mechakos rose from
400 kilogrammes of maize output per head to 1200
kilogrammes over a time period in which population
density rose from 50 to 132 per square
kilometre.
They did this as a result of local Akamba women
efforts to set up a strong movement called 'Mbai
sya eitu' in 1961, which was modelled on
traditional community labour schemes such as
'mwilaso,' 'mweytha' and 'vuli' where community
members can request the help of other people either
on a rotational or occasional basis.
"It is possible to arrest desertification and to
make land more and more productive but people have
to be secure in their land rights," said Tiffen.
"Otherwise there is no incentive." She added that
contrary to conventional wisdom, the Akamba raised
most of their funds themselves and did not depend
on the outside for assistance.
Two other activists on the panel spoke out
strongly against land use systems that promoted
overgrazing of various types and not land tenure
for local people.
Richard Ledgar, an activist from Australia, said
that his country's semi-arid lands were destroyed
by the tens of millions of sheep brought by
European settlers, while Roger Mpande of Zimbabwe,
said that an uncontrolled explosion in elephant
population was denuding the land.
Ledgar said that Australian land allocation
practices were at fault while Mpande pointed out
that local population were prohibited from
decisions over the use of their land.
In fact there are historically accepted methods
of dealing with regular short term drought in
desert regions like the Sahara where African
herdsman have led a nomadic lifestyle.
This is quite controversial though, because
governments accuse poor people living on the
margins of the desert of destroying it by cutting
down the last few trees for fuelwood.
Yet others say that the real problem is skewed
government development plans that have forced them
to do this on lands that they would normally not
have touched.
A briefing paper written by Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng
for the London based Panos institution, argues that
existing development institutions have aided and
abbetted land degradation.
For example the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade (GATT) and other agreements that support
market oriented agriculture and manufacturing force
farmers to switch production to crops that destroy
fragile lands.
Thus farmers in Thailand switched from rice to
tapioca to meet demands from European cattle
farmers. This resulted in extensive deforestation
in Thailand as forests were chopped down and
pressed into meeting this growing demand.
Now European farmers have decided to switch to
grain as cattle feed so the Thai farmers do not
even have a market anymore.
Others point to institutions like the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund who provide
subsidies for such export oriented agriculture
while forcing countries to adopt structural
adjustment programmes which make them cut back on
social spending that supports the poorest people
who live on degraded lands.
In fact, says Panos, the deserts are not
expanding, but merely changing shape. The real
threat is the destruction of fragile lands by
unsound use, it adds.
The Group of 77 developing countries also says
that without new money, any convention to save
deserts will fail. UNEP estimates that between 10
and 22.4 billion dollars would be required annually
for an effective 20-year anti-desertification
programme.
It says less than one billion dollars are
currently spent annually on land degradation
prevention.
Meanwhile, UNEP calculates that more than 42.3
billion dollars of potential income is lost
annually due to desertification in the roughly 100
countries affected.
But there are quarrels over how should get this
money if it does materialise. Sweden's U.N.
Ambassador Bo Kjellen, Chairman of the committee,
said in New York that one outstanding issue was the
timing of regional instruments -- or
region-specific action plans.
These action plans, or 'annexes', had divided
developing countries at earlier negotiations when
some Latin American and Asian countries accused
African delegates of "making a grab" for resources
by pushing for completion of their annexe
first.(END/IPS/EN/PC/94)
© 1994, InterPress Third World News
Agency (IPS)
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