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Nearly half of Africa's population of 325 million people is threatened by desertification. When combined with extreme poverty and severe land degradation, the threat acutely affects millions of Africans, a panel of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has reported.
"There is a complex cause-effect relationship between desertification, population growth and poverty. Poverty is both a cause and a consequence of land degradation, and the poor are both agents and victims of the process," the report said.
It was prepared by a panel of eminent personalities that met in Agadez, Niger in February. "[Globally] desertification affects 3.6 billion ha, 70 percent of all dry lands in more than 100 countries," the report said.
The panel recommended that the World Summit on Sustainable Development due to taker place in Johannesburg, South Africa in August recognize the link between land degradation and poverty and recommend measures to develop a special dry land rural areas program. The Prime Minister of Niger, was invited to deliver the recommendations of the panel to the summit.
The report is available at
http://www.unccd.int/meetings/global//agadez2002/report-eng.pdf
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
