Desertification talks open in Saudi Arabia as experts fire warning

RIYADH (Saudi Arabia): UN talks aimed astatine halting the degradation and desertification of immense swathes of onshore commencement successful Saudi Arabia connected Monday aft scientists fired a stark informing implicit unsustainable farming and deforestation.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called it a “moonshot moment”: a 12-day gathering for the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), looking to support and reconstruct onshore and respond to drought amid the onslaught of clime change.

The past specified meeting, oregon “Conference of the Parties” (COP) to the convention, held successful Ivory Coast successful 2022, produced a committedness to “accelerating the restoration of 1 cardinal hectares of degraded onshore by 2030”.

But the UNCCD, which brings unneurotic 196 countries and the European Union, present says 1.5 cardinal hectares (3.7 cardinal acres) indispensable beryllium restored by decade's extremity to combat crises including escalating droughts.

A time earlier the talks successful Saudi Arabia, location to 1 of the world's biggest deserts, a caller UN study warned that wood nonaccomplishment and degraded soils were reducing resilience to clime alteration and biodiversity loss.

“If we neglect to admit the pivotal relation of onshore and instrumentality due action, the consequences volition ripple done each facet of beingness and widen good into the future, intensifying difficulties for aboriginal generations,“ UNCCD Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw said successful the report.

Land degradation disrupts ecosystems and makes onshore little productive for agriculture, starring to nutrient shortages and spurring migration.

Land is considered degraded erstwhile its productivity has been harmed by quality activities similar contamination oregon deforestation. Desertification is an utmost signifier of degradation.

- 'We are a godforsaken country' -

Activists accused Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest lipid exporter, of trying to h2o down calls to signifier retired fossil fuels astatine past month's COP29 UN clime talks successful Azerbaijan.

However, desertification is simply a perennial contented for the arid kingdom.

“We are a godforsaken country. We are exposed to the harshest mode of onshore degradation, which is desertification,“ lawman situation curate Osama Faqeeha told AFP.

“Our onshore is arid. Our rainfall is precise little. And this is the reality. And we person been dealing with this for centuries.”

Saudi Arabia is aiming to reconstruct 40 cardinal hectares of degraded land, Faqeeha told AFP, without specifying a timeline. He said Riyadh anticipated restoring “several cardinal hectares of land” by 2030.

So acold 240,000 hectares person been recovered utilizing measures including a prohibition connected amerciable logging and expanding the fig of nationalist parks from 19 successful 2016 to much than 500, Faqeeha said.

Other ways to reconstruct onshore see planting trees, harvest rotation, managing grazing and restoring wetlands.

UNCCD enforcement caput Thiaw told AFP helium hoped the talks would effect successful an statement to accelerate onshore restoration and make a “proactive” attack to droughts.

“We person already mislaid 40 percent of our onshore and our soils,“ Thiaw said.

“Global information is truly astatine stake, and you spot it each implicit the world. Not lone successful Africa, not lone successful the Middle East.”

- 'COP charade' -

Thousands of delegates person registered to be the December 2-13 COP16 talks successful Riyadh, including “close to 100” authorities ministers, Thiaw said.

The lawsuit starts conscionable days aft the abstracted COP29 clime talks successful Azerbaijan came to a contentious end, arsenic a pledge of $300 cardinal to assistance poorer countries modulation to cleaner vigor was slammed arsenic excessively debased by processing nations.

Matthew Archer, adjunct prof successful the Department of Society Studies astatine Maastricht University and writer of “Unsustainable: Measurement, Reporting and the Limits of Corporate Sustainability”, was dismissive of the desertification talks.

They are portion of the “COP charade (that) is wholly incapable of facilitating the benignant of governmental enactment that mightiness sufficiently code the socioecological crises we are facing”, helium told AFP.

“I wouldn’t clasp my enactment for COP16 to output a tenable solution to desertification,“ added Archer.