U.N. conference addresses drought, creeping deserts and poverty
Regional, Economics, 2/21/2002

Drought, poverty, creeping deserts and scarce drinking water are headlining a U.N.-sponsored conference on global development and the environment.

Delegates to the conference, which opened Tuesday, hail from 50 African, Caribbean and Latin American countries. They are evaluating the 1994 U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification, which has been ratified by 180 countries but has spurred few to act.

Proposals to ensure the productivity of inhabited dry land will be submitted to the U.N. World Summit on Sustainable Development slated for next Aug.24 through Sept.4 in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez defended his efforts to fight poverty and strongly criticized "neoliberal" policies, which, he said, sacrifice the environment for the sake of profit.

The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) estimates that expanding deserts affect more than 100 countries. An estimated 3.6 billion hectares of forest and jungle are turning into barren land, it said last year.

Drought episodes have increased over the last two decades. According to the private World watch Institute, 1.1 billion people lack access to potable water.

"Land degradation continues unabated," said Mozambican Prime Minister Pacoal Mocumbimoza. "Land degradation has forced people to abandon poor areas for urban areas (and is) one of the main causes associated with food insecurity."

Nature isn't wholly to blame, delegates said. Developing nation governments must help individual farmers - most of whom in Africa are women - to secure plots of land which they can nurture, help feed themselves, generate income and arrest desert creep.

"One of the biggest problems in the struggle against desertification... is land ownership," said Venezuela's environment minister, Ana Elisa Osorio. "Desertification leads us to poverty. It's linked directly to nutritional security."

In Venezuela, an estimated 80 percent of 24 million people live in poverty. Sixty percent of the nation's arable land is owned by less than 1 percent of the population, the government says. Venezuela covers 912,000 square kilometers (352,145 square miles).

Osorio hailed Venezuela's controversial land reform program, which business leaders say threatens private property rights. President Hugo Chavez, who decreed a reform law in November, insists it will eliminate idle farmland and bolster prospects for the country's poor.

International agencies and developed nations must provide microcredits and technical advice to farmers in poor nations, Osorio said.

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