SciDev.Net

This report describes how the UN Convention to Combat Desertification is being implemented in 10 African countries. In particular, it shows how ordinary citizens, nongovernmental organisations and traditional authorities are integral to implementing the convention's provisions. But the report also emphasises the need to work alongside national governments and expert communities as well as bilateral and multilateral donor agencies such as the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility.

Examples in the report include a project to restore a 1.2 million-year old forest in Djibouti and a project for establishing a community desertification trust fund in Kenya. The report also looks at how women took the lead in a tree-planting project to first slow down and then reverse land degradation in Ghana, and further examines the role women played in formulating new environmental laws in Zimbabwe.

In a candid reply to an official review of the UN Convention Secretariat's work, the organisation's head Hama Arba Diallo acknowledges that if problems are not rectified, they could threaten the convention's existence. In response to the review, member states have set up a working group to explore how to implement the review's 25 recommendations. Also on the working group's agenda is to begin thinking about a 10-year plan for the convention.

Member states of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) requested this 24-page review, which pulls no punches about the convention's strengths and where it has gone wrong. The review reveals that the UNCCD's $17 million annual budget is half that of the UN Climate Convention. This is in part because member states from developed countries were not keen to help with finance – in itself a consequence of member states not agreeing on the convention's role or indeed whether it needed to exist at all.

The review also notes that the convention has had little effect on the national development plans of member states from developing countries. All this may be because the convention's activities lack focus. Is it an agreement about the environment or development? Is it concerned with local problems, or more global ones? The review also points out that the convention's title is misleading, as the fundamental issue is one of land degradation, of which desertification is a component. The review makes 25 recommendations to the secretariat, member states and donors.