The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD): a carrying pillar in the global combat against land degradation and food insecurity

This paper provides an overview of linkages between the phenomena of land degradation and desertification and food insecurity. It reviews the basic concepts linked to food security and records main coping strategies, policy challenges and fields or action. It describes the approach taken by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (one of the three multilateral environmental agreements coming out of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit) in combating land degradation and mitigating the effects of drought, including food insecurity. It suggests the field of forests and forest ecosystems as one of the most prospective areas for cooperation and fostering of synergies through development of projects in this field, which address the concerns of all three conventions. 1. Land degradation and food insecurity: the vicious circle Food insecurity and environmental degradation are inherently linked. As the world’s population is growing and the pressure on food supplies tightens, people are forced to use practices which increase yield in short term but are devastating for land in mediumor long-term. Agricultural practices which are not susceptible to sustainable land use, such as overgrazing, overfarming, using particular fertilizing techniques, deforestation, etc., all contribute to the phenomena of land degradation. Land degradation and, consequently, limited arable land; persistent water shortages and irrigation problems; recurrent health problems; domination of only a few crops in the agricultural production; all in turn result in food insecurity, thus closing this vicious circle. In addition to these endogenous factors, there are other, exogenous, phenomena linked to land degradation, such as climate change, drought, land erosion, salinization, and desertification. It is therefore clear that addressing food insecurity problems and addressing land degradation should go hand in hand. Proportions of the catastrophe In 2001, in 64 out of 105 developing countries, food production was lagging behind population growth. Total food production in Africa grows at the rate of two per cent per year, whereas population grows at a rate of three per cent. In countries defined by the FAO as “low-income, food deficit countries”, 800 million people are chronically undernourished and 2 billion people lack basic food security. According to the International Food Policy Research institute (IFPRI), the agricultural producers would have to produce 40 % more grain in twenty years from now, whereby it is assumed that this increase will have to be build on higher yield using the existing land and not on using new land. Unfavourable natural resource base for agriculture, reinforced by a harsh socio-economic context, creates a background against which these problems have to be tackled. The poor soil quality, together with water problem, is considered the most important limiting factor for Africa’s agriculture. In the last half of the 20 century, more than 5 billion hectares were affected by one or another form of land degradation, which is more than 60 per cent of UNCCD: a carrying pillar in the global combat against land degradation and food insecurity