Desertification Cost To Crops Alone Estimated At $42 Billion/Year - AFP

[hatrack]

Tunis - Experts at a world conference on desertification have called for political leaders to use the technical tools available to stem the merciless advance of parched land and its devastating social, economic and human consequences.

"In most cases, the technical solutions exist and the know-how is available to help the greatest number," Hama Arba Diallo, the executive secretary of the United Nations (UN) Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), said at the opening of the conference in the Tunisian capital. However, he lamented that 10 years after the UN convention on desertification the world's leaders still had not learnt to deal with the global advance of arid land.

Some 300 international experts have gathered for the conference in North Africa, organised by Unesco, as the "first demonstration" in the UN's year of focus on deserts and desertification, according to the Unesco undersecretary general for science, Walter Erdelen.

Desertification threatens 1.2 billion people in 110 countries, according to the UN, while two billion - or a third of the world's population - live in arid and semi-arid regions. With crop losses from the problem at an estimated $42bn a year, the advance of desert land causes famine, insecurity, social tension and mass migration from southern countries to the north, the organisation says.

EDIT

http://www.businessinafrica.net/news/north_africa/915017.htm

[phantom power]

1. K+R for "famine, insecurity, social tension and mass migration."

I like that word "tension." Like it's a headache, but ever so manageable. Take two miracles and call me in the morning.