In this page are dealt with matters related to the fertility of the land, seen in terms of energy and of  a vision of its long term availability and renewability. The issues addressed seek not only to give a  technical and normative vision but  aim also to create a basic conscience for a new way of "seeing" the world that we have inherited and that henceforth we will be "obliged” to govern.

THE ORIGIN OF DESERTIFICATION

by Guido Bissanti

Whenever one tries to speak about the concept of desertification in these times, one is faced with a notable difficulty which is linked exclusively to the real and effective understanding of the size of this problem.

And yet international conferences have for years increasingly diffused documents and "anathemas"

This is a vehicle which does not arouse a lot of liking among external observers and, in some case, induces  some perplexities: it is expensive (how many projects could be enacted instead?);  it produces even more paper; it is self-propagating, making appointments for new conferences. The decisions are slow and inevitably conditioned by compromises among the many parties involved.

Many are induced to think that all of this leads to a proliferation of documents and protocols that just  increase confusion and disorientation.

Yet it is difficult to sustain that it  is an avoidable path, even if only for the first, essential message that it sends: conferences increasingly highlight how the problem of desertification has to be addressed by  the whole international community and not just by those countries directly struck by it – which are mostly the poorest countries of the world. This is not such a foregone message, given the continuous temptation to place the issue in terms of  bilateral cooperation, in terms of it being "someone else’s problem" on which to intervene at our discretion.

There is an increasing tendency to concentrate the issue on:

1. resources and financial mechanisms;

2. the elaboration of a specific document for the Countries of central and eastern Europe;

3. the work of the  Science and Technology Committee with particular regard to the recovery of the traditional knowledge and early warning systems;

4. a synergetic model  for U.N organisations.;

5. "dialogue" between NGOs and government representatives and the integration of the programs which regard desertification;

6. protection of biodiversity and against climatic change.

The valuation of initiatives which fight desertification at a national, sub-regional and regional level  is becoming increasingly tangible. There is more and more  discussion about the principal operational tool, the Action Programs, which has to be elaborated and implemented, according to the UNCCD (United Nations Secretariat of the Convention to Combat Desertification), through an articulated process of consultation and involvement of all the interested parts - government bodies, NGOs, local communities, the private sector, and international cooperation.

In the years ahead donor countries will be increasingly called on to present reports on their own initiatives in support of developing countries affected by desertification. Finally, even international agencies and NGOs must prepare statements.

The principal objective of this collection of information is that to underline, through an open comparison, the successes to be sustained, and the difficulties on which to intervene. A kind of "group therapy" that, though not justifying the ineffectiveness of the actual mechanisms of international harmonization, perhaps allows to understand better the efforts made and those which are necessary or urgent to complete in the near future, remembering however that the problem of desertification is not "confined" to the Countries in which it is present.

Causes and effects, both direct and indirect, have more than ever “global” effects. So, desertification, for example, concerns also the countries of the north, where we witness a flow of immigrants coming from regions where  daily survival is undermined by the  degradation of resources. In the same way, desertification and drought arrive in the Horn of Africa, perhaps also through climatic changes and conditioning by agricultural and commercial policies, in which the models of consumption of the rich countries have more than their share of responsibility.

1. What in concrete terms is desertification?

Our thoughts are pulled to the image of the desert; but this derives from a wrong socio-cultural interpretation of the concept. In fact, it does not regard an expansion of the deserts "desertization"), but of a "degrading of the soil in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid zones provoked by various factors, among which are climatic variations and the relationship with the present model for human activities" (UNCCD, Art. 1.a).

It manifests itself with "the reduction or the disappearance of the productivity and biological or economic complexity of  cultivated lands, both irrigated and non, grasslands,  pastures,  forests or  wooded surfaces, caused by the systems which exploit the land, or from one or more processes, including those which derive from the activity of  man and from his way of settling the land, among which are water erosion, wind erosion, etc; the deterioration of the physical, chemical, biological or economic properties of the land: the long term loss of natural vegetation" (UNCCD, Art. 1.f).

The consequences of a such a phenomenon are evidently known  to all, but what is unknown, or better, clear, are the sociological principles that are producing all of this.

According to a report by the United Nations, there are around 110 countries affected by desertification. Systematic data do not exist on the phenomenon, on its speed and diffusion, but the data elaborated by UNEP are sufficient to offer a worrisome picture. 70% of the cultivable arid land, equal to around the 30% of the total land above sea level, appears to be struck or at risk of desertification. If the problem is particularly serious in Africa and in the developing countries of Asia, Latin America and Caribbean, the United Nations also points out that the United States, Australia, and southern and eastern Europe  are directly affected by the phenomenon. What is most surprising is that it is the USA which heads the table, with  74% of  its areas hit. In Europe,  desertification is present in Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain.

To address this situation the U.N.  has long since embarked upon a path that has already seen by the end of September 2000  167 of the Countries ratify the U.N Convention  for the fight against desertification (UNCCD), including every European one.

The Convention provides for a Secretariat, which has had its headquarters in Bonn since1999, a Science and Technology Committee, the advisory organ on specific themes (traditional knowledge, indicators, early warning systems ,...), and a financial instrument, the "Global Mechanism", constituted in Rome at IFAD. On the operational front, various U.N agencies continue to address the problem of desertification, among which are FAO, IFAD, the U.N.  Development Program (UNDP), the World Meteorological organization, UNEP, UNESCO.

The road that led to the Convention has been relatively short. In short, the United Nations had already started to take an interest  in the phenomenon of desertification in the 50s with UNESCO (U.N Education,  Science and Culture Organisation). But a series of catastrophic events accelerated this process, among which the serious drought that  struck the Sahel from 1968 to 1974. The tragedy that made the whole world sensitive to the problem launched a new stream of bilateral and multilateral cooperation and  began a cycle of new international conferences that contributed, among other, to the expansion of the structures of the U.N. and of its commitments.

Another fundamental date is that of 1992 - the U.N Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED)  which asked for a new, more effective international instrument against  desertification. The "Convention of the United Nations for the fight against  desertification, in the Countries seriously struck by drought and/or from  desertification, particularly in Africa" was consequently adopted in Paris on June 17th 1994, later declared to be the world day for the fight against desertification, and it went into effect on December 26th 1996.

The member countries  gathered for the first session of the Conference of Parties (COP) in Rome in 1997. There followed annual COPs, in Dakar, Senegal; and then in Recife, Brazil. The fourth  will be held in Bonn, Germany.

2. The role of Italy

Italy actively participates in the work of the Conference of  Parties, both in the role of donor and as a Country affected by desertification. According to the data  possessed by the Ministry for the  Environment and Protection of the Territory, which heads the Italian Committee for the fight against desertification, around  27% of our territory is threatened by processes  which make the land arid.

Furthermore, Italy is currently the president of the regional group, (the so-called "annexed IV") that brings together the Countries of the northern Mediterranean (Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Turkey). According to the Convention, in fact, the region is hit by desertification because of climatic factors, the crisis of the agricultural sector and consequent abandonment of the land, water and wind erosion , forest fires, non sustainable exploitation of the water resources, especially in coastal areas, for agricultural, industrial, urban, and tourist uses.

3. The origin of the phenomenon

Human activities have always been, in reality, among the principal phenomenon which incise on  territorial equilibrium and on the ecosystem.

The presence of man on the territory is a factor of dynamics that cannot always be integrated with those pertaining to the ecosystem.

Indeed, a fundamental step, cultural even more than scientific, is that to individualize the exact equilibrium between the demands of  man and its consequences on the territory.

But above all, it is necessary to redefine a precise anthropological concept and therefore the positioning of  ‘man the creature’ in the universe, if he is central or an  equal part of multiple components.

The same value that has however always been given (whatever one’s theological and philosophical positions) to the protection of human life  represents the  departure point for understanding that environmental policy has to be redefined in this relationship which is subordinate to the value of man.

It would seem an obvious step, banal even, yet it has to be a place of real and impartial comparison in the dialectics of the world.

In short: there is an environment  which must be protected and preserved as it offers a service to human value, and  man who has to reorganize his own  world  in order to protect himself in the centuries to follow.

This way of thinking, which was introduced for the first time by the United Nations in 1987 (Enunciation of  Sustainable Development), "clashes" strongly with the socioeconomic model that  we have managed to build up until today.

Just as in the distant past  man abandoned  his nomadic life in the moment in which he learned the first rules of how to manage nature, so too today (it is process already underway that needs an historic length of time to be fully understood) man  has  gradually to abandon the model of "assaulting” energy sources and  the territory and switch to a model that manages and promotes  these, within the limits of their rules.

The territory will therefore be more and more like an energy system (going beyond the definition of energy that we have today) and the policies which protect it will have to be formulated in this respect.

It is to understand the rules that  world conferences, meetings and debates, even political ones, are held, striving to overcome those conditions which cause desertification, the desertification of both man and the world.

In this way the value of ecosystem (but not only that)  becomes the parameter of reference for all the energy systems  that  the socioeconomic model has to operate.

The mechanism developed by the thermodynamic models of  nature is one that, through diversification (also biological) and specialization, has allowed  energy coming from matter (solar, terrestrial etc.) to be used in the best way and has gradually placed it at the service of  man.

Every time  that  man sets up thermodynamic systems which are "distant" from  natural ones he damages  and lowers the energy output of  "matter", impoverishing it and causing desertification.

It is in the cultural understanding of these principles that today the re-fertilization of matter is based; it must  proceed from a spiritual re-fertilisation to a  material one.