Stopping Africa’s deserts from creeping further into fertile land is the aim of a $50-million project launched on Monday by the United Nations.
The UN Global Environment Facility announced funding for the Desert Margins Programme to work in dryland areas of nine African countries, including South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe. The funding is to help researchers find out how plants survive on the edges of deserts and how farmers can restore fertility to arid lands, then apply the results to land in danger of becoming desert, officials told a news conference in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.
”This project is not only an environment project, it’s also a poverty-alleviation project,” said Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the UN Environment Programme.
About two-thirds of Africa’s land mass is classified as desert or dryland. Some 22-million people live at the edges of great African deserts like the Sahara and Kalahari, trying to eke out a living where rainfall averages 20 to 60 centimetres annually.
People have survived in such places for centuries through nomadic lifestyles, but they are more frequently choosing to settle, increasing the rate of environmental damage, said Henry Cheruiyot of the Kenyan Agricultural Research Institute.
Such people ”know the environment is being degraded but they sometimes don’t have alternative sources of livelihood,” said Saidou Koala, co-ordinator of the Desert Margins Programme based in Naimey, Niger.
”Unless rural communities are provided with alternative livelihoods, it will be difficult for them to adopt biodiversity conservation strategies,” Koala told the news conference.
He said the funding will allow the programme to help communities find new sources of income and to put in place action plans for reversing the advance of deserts. – Sapa-DPA