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Message of Luc Gnacadja
Executive Secretary
United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification
On the occasion of Africa Environment Day/Wangari Maathai Day
Saturday, 3 March 2012
“Lake Chad: Our Common Heritage, Our Common Future”
Today, we commemorate both Wangari Maathai Day and Africa Environment Day. The
occasion symbolizes challenge and hope for Africa. For a decade now, the continent has
observed Africa Environment Day in order to bring global attention and raise public awareness
regionally on the most critical and abiding environmental challenges for Africa – including
desertification and drought. By also declaring the occasion Wangari Maathai Day, in memory of
her immense environmental contribution, the continent affirms that the solution lies in halting
and reversing the exposure of the land to the elements, by putting an end to deforestation and
planting more trees. Lake Chad, the focus of the Day’s events, provides striking visual evidence
of both these messages.
Lake Chad was once the sixth largest freshwater lake in the world, ten times its current size and
much deeper. Land degradation as a result of deforestation and inappropriate land management,
compounded by recurrent severe droughts, now dangerously threatens the Lake’s survival. A
similar fate has befallen Lake Turkana, in the Horn of Africa region, once a source of livelihood
for communities across the border regions of Ethiopia and Kenya. Migration and civil conflict
followed the changes in the geography of the lakes. The impact was felt well beyond the
affected and surrounding countries. Land degradation also threatens the Aral Sea in Central
Europe so the situation is not unique to Africa. It is instructive though that taking land and water
resources for granted has severe human, economic and environmental costs.
Under the auspices of the Greenbelt Movement, Wangari Maathai crusaded for an end to the
deforestation that contributes to Africa’s land degradation and worsens the effects of drought. In
the region, she called for policies to support tree planting and sustainable land management. At
the international level, she called for solidarity and support to address these problems not just in
Africa but globally. Africa’s response to the Lake Chad crisis is the “Great Green Wall of the
Sahel and Sahara Initiative and Lake Chad”. In establishing this mosaic of greenery to
rehabilitate degraded land by nurturing forests, grasslands and cropland in an area nearly
8,000km long and 15km wide, Africa is demonstrating leadership and a commitment to
strengthening the resilience of land. By rehabilitating degraded land and preventing further
deforestation, the Sahel and region around Lake Chad can be assured of a positive balance of
healthy land in the future.
Sadly, for the fifth year running, Africa is observing the Day amidst ‘silent’ drought crises
unfolding on the continent. This time, the crisis is in the Sahel. Urgent food relief is needed
again and is trickling in from the international community. This strategy has now been proven to
be neither sustainable nor effective. It is time to find a collective long-term solution to mitigate
the effects of drought and comprehensively combat land degradation. Local efforts that include
communities and local/national governments are crucial, in fact, critical. In this regard, the
UNCCD and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) are laying the foundations to help
build coordinated, proactive national policies on drought by organizing a High-level Meeting on
National Drought Policy scheduled for March 2013. We all need to strengthen our common
effort in the face of expanding, intensifying and increasingly recurrent droughts and unrelenting
pace of land degradation. Local communities must be empowered to be the change agent.
Wangari Maathai was not only a strong believer in the humming-bird principle of making an
abiding personal commitment to environmental conservation. She also believed in collective
action at the global and local level and in taking a political stand. So, where do we stand?
The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development that will take place in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil, in June is an opportunity to tackle the most critical sustainable development
issues of our time. Each year, 12 million hectares of land are lost due to desertification. Land
degradation directly affects 1.5 billion people globally. Africa Environment Day reminds us that
we must take a bold stand on this issue in Rio.
Healthy soil sustains your life. In order to guarantee the health and well-being of the land and
soil for present and future generations, we must be bold. The UNCCD is calling on the
international community to adopt the goal of sustainable land use for all and by all at Rio. This
means two practical commitments: to achieve zero net land degradation and zero net forest
degradation by 2030 while mitigating the effects of drought.
The UNCCD secretariat stands with Africa in all efforts to curb land degradation and drought,
and congratulates the African people and their Union for drawing global attention to these issues
through the case of Lake Chad. We congratulate the African Union for taking a political stand to
become land degradation neutral, and call on the international community, to join Africa in
immortalizing Wangari Maathai by taking bold actions against land degradation and drought at
Rio.
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