Drylands centre to focus on livelihoods in arid areas

The newly launched Drylands Development Centre (DDC), located in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, is aimed at bringing the livelihood problems faced by millions of people in arid areas around the world into the "heart of national poverty reduction strategies" in their respective countries, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) reported on Monday.

"These are not places of hopeless poverty needing constant welfare programmes for support, and, if properly managed with enlightened policies, they can become areas of productivity that provide excellent livelihoods," said Phillip Dobie, the director of the DDC, in a statement.

More than 250 million people in nearly 20 countries are directly affected by desertification, and about one billion in more than 100 countries are at risk, due mainly to pressures on fragile environments from excessive farming and livestock grazing, over-cutting of woodlands and poor irrigation practices, according to the UNDP.

The DCC was set up after the dismantling of the New York-based UNDP Office to Combat Desertification and Drought (UNSO), and relocated to Nairobi as part of the agency's ongoing decentralisation plan, the centre's programme specialist on information, Sarah Anyoti, told IRIN on Tuesday.

Nairobi was chosen as a location not only because it is in a region affected by dryland issues but also because it is the headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with which the DDC will need to work closely, she said.

"We relocated from New York to Nairobi because UNDP's main focus is to decentralise major parts of the organisation to the field - to bring us much closer to our clients," Anyoti said. "We are a global unit, but Africa is our biggest client. Top priority will be given to African countries affected by the drought," she added.

During the centre's inauguration ceremony on 11 February, Kenyan Vice-President George Saitoti said his country and others in Africa "stand to benefit from the long experience and expertise of UNDP in dealing with matters of desertification".

The DDC in Nairobi (funded and supported by Canada, Sweden and Norway, among others) is due to focus programmes on three main areas:

- ensuring that dryland communities are provided for in national development plans and budgets, especially in poverty reduction strategies;
- helping countries deal with the current effects of climate variability, especially droughts, and prepare them for future effects of future climate change; and,
- addressing vital local issues affecting the use of resources, such as access to water and land tenure, which have a great impact on the livelihoods of communities.