George Awudi Bright, Friends of the Earth Ghana
Desertification has long been recognized as a major environmental problem, with adverse impacts on the livelihoods of people in affected areas around the world. Desertification currently affects one-sixth of the world’s population and 70% of all dry lands, amounting to 3.6 billion hectares and one-quarter of the world’s total land area.
In Africa, the impact of desertification is particularly acute. It threatens the lives of countless millions and seriously affects more than 39% of the continent, dangerously undermining the ability of countries to feed their people in the future. Furthermore, an increasing focus on exports to northern markets, combined with potential conflicts between trade rules and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, means that further trade liberalization could worsen rather than improve this situation.
Causes of desertification
Desertification is a phenomenon that starts with loss of vegetation and leads to decreased soil fertility and ultimately barren land and desert. Natural factors such as drought, coupled with unsustainable human activities including forest removal, the indiscriminate burning of bush and forests, unsustainable farming practices and overgrazing, are all major causes of desertification. Impacts are severe and wide-ranging, and include soil erosion, declining soil fertility, the evaporation of water bodies, drinking water shortages, salinization, decreasing crop yields, food insecurity, hunger and starvation, disease, conflict over water and land resources, extreme poverty, migration and loss of biodiversity.
Technically, it is easy for the desertification process to be triggered in new areas if unsuitable policies encourage unsustainable land-based activities, as can happen when land is turned over to extensive export-led agricultural production. Ghana and Haiti are cases in point here, as shown by the case studies on the following pages.
Combating desertification
Concern about the scourge of desertification, particularly in Africa, led the United Nations to elaborate the Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in 1996. One of the cardinal aims of the UNCCD is to minimize the degradation of land and halt the extension of deserts. It promotes the adoption of “longterm integrated strategies that focus … on improved productivity of land, and the rehabilitation, conservation and sustainable management of land and water resources, leading to improved living conditions, in particular at the community level.”
The adoption of export-led agriculture, as promoted through the WTO and other trade agreements, seems to be having exactly the opposite impacts in countries affected by desertification. Furthermore, one of the major principles of the UNCCD is that decision-making should be undertaken in collaboration with local communities. This is again at odds with the WTO, which through its services liberalization negotiations prioritizes the opening up of ‘nature and landscape protection’ services. This could have significant impacts on the rights and abilities of local and indigenous peoples to access and manage the natural resources found within protected areas for their own livelihoods and traditional uses.
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EXPANDING TRADE, EXPANDING DESERTS IN GHANA
George Awudi Bright, Friends of the Earth Ghana
In Ghana, over 35% of the total land area is suffering from desertification. While Ghanaians are battling with existing desert conditions in the northern parts of the country, trade liberalization is generating new problems in the middle or forest savannah zone.
The forest savannah is a transitional zone, located between the borders of the northern savannah grassland and the rich southern forest belt. It is a critical buffer zone, protecting the forested south from desertification from the north. It is also richly endowed with biological diversity: a wide variety of birds, wildlife and plant species live in the forest savannah. Many of these species have biological and medicinal importance, and local people rely upon and manage them for their livelihoods.
Water for life and livelihoods
This zone also holds important watersheds for the major rivers and their tributaries that flow through the country, meeting the water needs of the majority of Ghanaians and providing fish. The zone’s highly productive soils support a wide range of food and cash crops, and a large proportion of the country’s timber and cocoa - major sources of foreign income for Ghana – also come from this area. In short, the forest savannah is the nation’s food basket and a guarantee of food security.
However, as a result of trade liberalization, the cultivation and export of certain crops (previously grown mainly for local consumption) has been prioritized in certain critical ecological zones. No one can dispute the fact that expanded agricultural cultivation and the diversification of exports could bring much needed economic benefits to a developing country like Ghana. However, this cannot be achieved at the expense of Ghana’s fragile ecosystems and future generations.
Yam farming fobbbr export
Yam farming, particularly in the districts of Krachi and Nkwanta, is particularly problematic. These areas have undergone large-scale conversion of forest lands to make way for yam cultivation, creating intense pressure on natural resources. In addition, preparing land for yam cultivation involves cutting and burning vegetation cover and removing tree roots (to make way for mounds and to allow tender yam roots to grow without obstruction). In such a delicate and fragile ecosystem, forest clearance, land degradation and intensive cultivation are a recipe for biodiversity loss, further desertification and food insecurity. Ultimately, the livelihoods of the poorest Ghanaians are threatened, rather than enhanced, by the increasing international trade in yams.
Loss of medicinal plants is also a problem. In the words of Dr. Ayikue Torkpo, a regional herbal medicine practitioner and expert, the medicinal plants found in the forest savannah zone are amongst the most potent anywhere. He believes that the loss of herbs and wildlife through land degradation poses a significant threat to the health of local people.
Friends of the Earth Ghana fears that trade liberalization threatens productive but fragile ecosystems and drylands in Ghana and the rest of Africa. In the near future, all of the world’s remaining drylands may be transformed into desert lands.
Small Island States, food imports and desertification
Aldrin Calixte, Friends of the Earth Haiti
Over the past decade, small island developing countries unilaterally deregulated and liberalized their agricultural sectors as part of the structural adjustment process imposed by the Bretton Woods institutions. This liberalization often went much further than commitments entered into at the time of the WTO’s Uruguay Round of trade negotiations.
As part of this process, many of these countries were granted preferential access to markets in richer countries, enabling them to continue to trade even though they were relatively small and therefore less efficient producers. However, current WTO negotiations, which aim to lower trade barriers in all countries, would reduce the benefits that many of the poorest countries receive from trade preferences. Without trade preferences, products from small islands such as coconut, banana, sugar and spices are likely to become uncompetitive at the global level.
food imports and environmental decline
Small island states are also increasingly dependent on food imports. Haiti, for example, now produces only 39% of its own food, importing 54% and relying on international food aid for the balance.
The progressive weakening of economies in these small island countries is a significant barrier to governments seeking to stem poverty, conserve natural resources, and promote fair and sustainable economies. Declining incomes also force people to turn to other natural resources, such as forests and fisheries, to try and eke out a living.
Barely a tree left in the forest
In Haiti, for example, some landowners have been forced to give up farming because they simply cannot compete with the agricultural imports that now flow in freely from other countries. Instead, they overexploit local forest resources to produce charcoal. This, together with generally increased pressure on local natural resources over the years, has led to the disappearance of 99% of Haiti’s forests and the acceleration of land degradation and desertification. In turn, food availability and accessibility are negatively impacted.
In short, trade liberalization has had negative impacts on the economic, environmental and social circumstances of many small island developing countries, and accelerated desertification will continue to threaten people and environments in these regions.
The above article is part of the report "The tyranny of free trade: Wasted natural wealth and lost livelihoods" released by Friends of the Earth International for the Sixth WTO Ministerial Meeting in Hong Kong, 13-18 December 2005.
See full report in PDF document
More information on WTO and environmental issues on:
http://www.foei.org/wto/index.html
