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Monday, June 17, 2019

World Day to Combat Desertification

World Day to Combat Desertification is celebrated every year in every country on Jun. 17 to promote good land stewardship for the benefit of present and future generations.

Think about what it takes to feed 7.5 billion people. Only 20 percent of the planet is habitable, yet within our own lifetimes one out of every four hectares of productive land has become unusable, three out of every four hectares have been altered from their natural state, and while agriculture drives that change, we waste a third of the food,” said head of the UNCCD Ibrahim Thiaw who added, increasing food production by 50 percent, when land degradation and climate change will be decreasing crop yields by 50 percent, makes restoring and protecting the fragile layer of land an issue for “anyone who wants to eat, drink or breathe.” 

UNCCD-Science Policy Interface co-chair Dr. Mariam Akhtar-Schuster, explained, The main message is: things are not improving. The issue of desertification is becoming clearer to different communities, but we now have to start implementing the knowledge that we already have to combat desertification. It’s not only technology that we have to implement, it is the policy level that has to develop a governance structure which supports sustainable land management practices...On all continents you have the issue of land degradation, so there’s no continent, there’s no country which can just lean back and say this is not our issue. Everybody has to do something...There is no top-down approach. You need the people on the ground, you need the people who generate knowledge and you need the policy makers to implement that knowledge. You need everybody. Nobody in a community, in a social environment, can say this has nothing to do with me. We are all consumers of products which are generated from land. So, we in our daily lives – the way we eat, the way we dress ourselves – whatever we do has something to do with land, and we can take decisions which are more friendly to land than what we’re doing at the moment.”

75 percent of the land area is very significantly altered, 66 percent of the ocean area is experiencing increasing cumulative impacts, and 85 percent of the wetland area has been lost.

UNCCD Lead Scientist Dr. Barron Joseph Orr said,We’ve got a situation where 75 percent of the land surface of the earth has been transformed, and the demand for food is only going to go up between now and 2050 with the population growth expected to increase one to two billion people. That’s a significant jump. Our demand for energy that’s drawn from land, bio energy, or the need for land for solar and wind energy is only going to increase but these studies are making it clear that we are not optimising our use.” He added, “We need better incentives for our farmers and ranchers to do the right thing on the landscape, we have to have stronger safeguards for tenures so that future generations can continue that stewardship of the land,” he added. 

Socialism has become discredited in the view of many environmentalists who argue that socialism is fundamentally anti-ecological, high-lighting the destructive ecological actions of “workers'” states like the Soviet Union and its satellites. For socialists, society’s productive forces is the material basis for social progress and higher level of development is critical to build world socialism. To many environmentalists, however, this overly concern with expanding production is at the expense of ecological considerations. Ecologists must face the reality that much of the world does need higher levels of consumption. Billions of people in the world need, in order to have better lives, secure food and water, decent housing, improved transport and communications infrastructure, and health services. But there would also be more parks and gathering spaces that facilitate community interaction. If people have no secure means of subsistence to live, they will survive as best they can using what means are available to them, which tend to be highly destructive to their eco-systems. Millions of people still use wood for heating and cooking. India alone has millions who live without access to electricity. Poverty is a major part of the reason there is so much deforestation in India, Africa, and parts of Asia. Renewable electricity provision for the entire planet — and the eradication of poverty — would have to be part of any move to living sustainably with the Earth. In order to solve the global ecological crisis, we must undertake an enormous transfer of resources to the poor and offer a comfortable life to the billions of people from whom capitalism have left in misery. The only way to develop human potential and generate a healthier planet is through a developing the productive forces of society. A democratically planned and ecologically rational society will be able to overcome the ways in which capitalism is holding us back from producing more efficiently and sustainably. All these transformations in production and the rational allocation of resources are possible with technologies that exist now, but capitalism’s drive for profit holds us back from implementing them.

Understanding capitalism is essential to address the environmental crisis. An ecologically benign society is incompatible with capitalism. The reason, why capitalism is eco-destructive is its need to grow endlessly. Production is not geared to satisfy need, but instead to produce profit. Capitalists produce with the hope of gaining as large a share of the market as possible. This leads to shattered lives, unemployment, disease and violence. The relationship towards nature that socialists advocates is one that restores us to nature. In an ecologically sustainable society, the means of production and distribution would be democratically controlled and organised to provide the greatest possible social benefit, which would entail ecological sustainability. Because the economy would be structured to further the development of human potential, technological advances in production would be used to shorten work hours rather than to produce more, leading to more free time to do truly fulfilling activities and allow us greater variety in how we spend our lives. A sustainable and just society would be a more efficient way to fulfill people’s needs. Work would be structured in ways that allow people to feel a closer connection with the production of food and resources. A socialist society would offer the freedom to live rewarding lives less centered around consumption. 

Certainly there would be changes in what people consume in a sustainable society — an ecologically sound agricultural system would probably rear less meat and grow less out-of-season produce — but this would occur because of a change in production in context of revolutionary liberation leading to a better life. Overall, such an agricultural system would supply healthier, more nutritious and better-tasting food), so it would not be experienced as a sacrifice. With the establishment of socialism, a democratic, planned use of resources goods and services could be produced in different, more efficient and environmentally sound ways reducing the ecological footprint. A sustainable society and a socialist society are inseparable.

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