No funds to fight desertification

by Jaya Ramachandran

Bonn, 12 Dec 2000 (IPS) - Finding sufficient money to combat drought and desertification - which are affecting 1.2 billion people around the globe - is a major issue confronting a two-week long United Nations conference in Bonn, Germany.

The need for adequate funds was reiterated Monday and Tuesday by the Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCDD), Hama Arba Diallo and senior officials from funding agencies, the donor nations and developing countries.

One hundred and seventy-two countries, including the United States, have ratified the Convention. However, an agreement on who would foot the bill for its effective implementation, appears far from being within easy reach.

Germany’s deputy minister for economic co-operation and development, Uschi Eid, told reporters Tuesday that her government favoured full implementation of the convention.

Apart from hosting the permanent secretariat of the Convention, the German government was providing substantial support to projects designed to combat desertification, she said. “A large number of ongoing projects backed by total commitments of some 2.8 billion DM (some $1.4 billion dollars) have gathered widespread experience which can prove valuable,” added Eid.

However, due to financial constraints - a huge public debt - Germany could not support opening a new window at the Global Environment Facility (GEF), as desired by the secretariat of the Convention and African countries, many of which suffer from desertification.

The GEF was established by the World Bank, the UNDP and UNEP in 1990.  It operates as the financial mechanism of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Bio-diversity Convention (UNCBD).

The GEF was created to provide grants and concessional funds to developing countries to finance incremental costs for programmes, projects, and activities to protect the world’s environment.  Anti-desertification projects relevant to the focal areas of climate change, bio-diversity, ozone depletion, and international waters may be eligible for funding.

However, the GEF is not the financial mechanism of UNCCD.

Established under the Convention, the Global Mechanism is in charge of promoting actions for the mobilisation and channelling of substantial financial resources, including for the transfer of technology, on a grant basis and/or on concessional or other terms, to affected developing country parties.

The Global Mechanism is hosted in Rome by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and functions under the authority and guidance of the Conference of the Parties.

The gathering under way in Bonn is the Fourth Session of the Conference of Parties (COP4) to the UNCCD.

IFAD Assistant President Takao Shibata said at the COP4 Tuesday: “We ... remain fully committed to the success of the Global Mechanism and the goals of the Convention.”

“Unfortunately, the experience of the Global Mechanism does not bode well here,” he added. This is because it continues to lack the necessary resources to fulfil its role outlined within the Convention.

“Leading up to the 10^th anniversary of UNCED (Earth Summit in June 1992 in Rio de Janeiro) it is therefore of paramount importance that the COP re-affirms its commitment to supporting the GM and assures that it is allocated the necessary resources to perform its duties most effectively,” he exhorted the some 2,000 delegates from some 170 countries, regional and multilateral organisations as well as non governmental organisations (NGOs). “This is the consensus that we must reach and act upon here in Bonn and thus further the process in reaching international desertification goals to be assessed at Rio+10.”

[According to an announcement by South Africa, it has offered to host the Rio+10 meet in 2002]

In his opening statement Monday, COP3 President Jose Sarney Filho, Brazil’s Minister of State, underscored the need for strengthening the Global Mechanism to enable more decisive support to the Convention. He noted with concern the unsustainable actions that characterise the behaviour of the world economy. He stated that despite technological progress, world poverty was increasing.

He said the current situation is aggravated by the failure of the COP6 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change last month in The Hague, the Netherlands.

This, he said, disrupted the foundation of the hope and implies that future generations are not in the plans of the world leaders. He urged parties to revive the spirit of the 1992 Rio Conference, noting that it was fundamental to make progress at COP4, to at least prepare the populations living in fragile environments to cope with more adverse conditions.

Sarney Filho recalled the Recife initiative (named after COP3 last year), which proposes that COP4 adopts a declaration of commitments. He urged the various governmental institutions, NGOs and multilateral agencies to participate actively in formulating the declaration and making it one of the main goals of the Conference.

On the functions of the financial mechanisms to support national plans to combat desertification, he called on the GEF to seriously examine opening a window to give financial support to projects specifically linked to the CCD. Earlier, in his welcoming statement Monday, UNCCD Executive Secretary Diallo said that COP4 should constitute “a defining step to move the implementation of the Convention from reporting to assessment, to bring actions down to earth to address the concerns of the millions of people threatened by poverty and land degradation”.

In a widely noted address, Finland’s Harri Holkeri, President of the 55^th Session of the General Assembly, assured delegates of the Assembly’s support to the UNCCD. He noted that the desertification convention is important because it focuses on areas where balance has to be reached between the needs of humans and ecosystems, and that dry ecosystems support the poorest of the poor.

Holkeri recalled that the UN Millennium Summit resolved to prioritise the eradication of poverty. He also noted that co-operation and partnership are key solutions to sustainable development and highlighted the work of the UNDP related to dryland management, as an example of mainstreaming action against desertification.

He also noted the efforts to seek synergies between the Rio conventions and applauded the recent review of co-operation between the GEF and the conventions.

Holkeri was pleased to note that more than 30 National Action Programmes (NAPs) have been prepared by affected countries and underlined that co- operation between different ministries is important in such processes. He finally noted that the developing countries’ commitment to fulfilling their obligations under the CCD should galvanise the interest of the international community.

Officially opening COP4, Johannes Rau, Germany’s Federal President noted that some developed countries appeared to many developing lands to be practising eco-colonialism.

He urged them not to shirk their responsibilities for short-term gains, to be self-critical enough to admit their failure to combat poverty and realise development in developing countries, to stick to the 0.7 percent GDP target for development assistance despite short-term difficulties in realising it. He also urged them to undertake their responsibility to provide the best technology, financial assistance, transfer of know-how and rules to assure competition.