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Call for a Major Push to Combat Land Degradation
The GEF Forum on “Sustainable Land and Water Management,” held prior to the Third GEF Assembly consisted of three symposia and a high-level round table attended by over 250 participants, including six African ministers and Heads of Agencies. “The Forum was instrumental in focusing attention on land degradation issues,” said Walter Lusigi, Senior Environmental Specialist, GEF Secretariat. “It was our contribution to the UN’s International Year of Deserts and Desertification campaign, 2006.”
The following statement was agreed by the Forum participants and was submitted to the Third GEF Assembly:
1. Ever-increasing demands on the land from global economic growth, burgeoning cities and rural people are driving unprecedented land use change. Land use change is often driving soil erosion, water scarcity and salinity, nutrient overdraft, pollution and forest loss - undermining the ecosystems that support our habitat, economy and society. Land degradation is not just a collection of local difficulties; it is a global issue responsible for climate change, loss of biodiversity, rural poverty, and the flight of people to cities and across borders. Extreme land degradation and extreme poverty join forces in drylands where the vagaries of climate are often exacerbated by unsustainable land management.
2. It is proven that land degradation can be reversed but effective technologies are yet to be translated into effective policies, and the resources applied are not even of the same order of magnitude as the scale of the problem.
3. The mandate of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) is to protect the global life support system on which all life depends. Land degradation, part of this mandate, is an environment issue and, at the same time, a development issue. Sustainable land management is essential to both combat degradation of ecosystems and to raise human well-being.
4. The GEF has provided a new impetus to efforts to combat land degradation through its many linkage projects and its Operational Program 15 (OP#15) on Sustainable Land Management (SLM) through investments, capacity building, projects, and framework processes such as Country Pilot Partnerships (CPP) and TerrAfrica. SLM is being carried into national development programs and donor cooperation frameworks by GEF’s collaboration with the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the Global Mechanism; these initiatives are beginning to make a difference and need to be continued and expanded.
5. A critical aspect of OP#15 is the integration of land, water, biodiversity and societal issues. This enables responses to problems affecting whole ecosystems and economies, through coordinated land use planning and resource management. Integrated land and water management is important everywhere but critical in drylands - to conserve biodiversity, moderate climatic fluctuations and change, and enhance productivity.
6. SLM involves a combination of scientific knowledge, local knowledge and know-how, innovation, and community-driven action. New capacity for knowledge management and exchange plays a key role; transparent knowledge-sharing and feedback are important GEF principles.
7. GEF is encouraged to test implementation of the concept of integrated land and water resources management by working with countries to:
8. GEF, as a coordinating agent, should take the lead to develop a policy and administrative framework within which various sectoral, national and district organizations can contribute to such integrated approaches as SLM.
9. In view of the critical state and trend of land degradation, GEF and its partner agencies are urged to focus on activities that will result in a significant reduction in land degradation and its damage to ecosystem services and to the poor. Every effort should be made to increase the resources devoted at national and international levels, and to improve their effectiveness where the need is greatest – in particular in Africa.
10. At a minimum, the Forum background paper on Resource Mobilization recommends an additional 10 – 15 percent annual increase in resources for the next ten years by countries and donor agencies.
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