The role of UNEP in desertification research and mitigation

摘要

The concept of desertification dates to colonial West Africa in the 1920s and 1930s, and was revived in the early 1970s in an attempt to understand a long series of drought years that brought environmental degradation, economic hardship and famine to the African Sahel. The extent of human suffering reported from the Sahel resulted in intense humanitarian, political and scientific concern around the world. After UNESCO and UNEP sponsored investigations of the status of desertification by Hugh Lamprey in the north-western Sudan in 1975, consensus about the gravity of the problem led to concerted international action, culminating in the UN Conference on Desertification (UNCOD) in 1977. The UNCOD, hosted by the UNEP in Nairobi, marked the beginning of the organization's commitment to the desertification issue, which emerged as one of the first major environmental problems of global concern. Four extensive reviews of the existing state of knowledge on desertification (and its relationship to climate, ecological processes, society and technology), a number of case studies, and a set of desertification maps were prepared for the conference. The UNCOD resulted in a United Nations Plan of Action to Combat Desertification (PACD) that was to be implemented at national levels with the goal of preventing and arresting desertification. UNEP was mandated to coordinate the implementation and monitor the progress of the PACD, and in 1984 it commissioned several surveys in the form of questionnaires sent to the respective countries to as'sist in this process. The Plan of Action implementation reports remained a centerpiece in the desertification agenda of the UNEP Governing Council and the UN General Assembly until the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 where it was debated and recognized in Chapter 12 of Agenda 21.