The United Nations calls for strengthening global efforts to stop desertification and combat drought

This year, the United Nations celebrates “World Environment Day,” which falls on June 5 of each year, under the slogan “Our Earth, Our Future… Together We Reclaim Our Planet,” highlighting the Earth’s environmental challenges and ways to enhance global efforts to stop desertification and combat drought, and mobilize All possible international efforts to revitalize projects to replant lands, increase forests, revive water sources, and re-nourish the soil, to improve human living, stop deprivation, and achieve food security for all vulnerable and economically marginalized people around the world.

In a message addressed to the international community yesterday evening, on the eve of the United Nations’ celebration of this occasion, António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, urged donor and developed countries to increase funding directed to support developing countries in their efforts to adapt to violent weather phenomena, protect nature, and support sustainable development.

Guterres warned of what he called “the toxic mix of pollution, climate chaos and the collapse of biodiversity that has contributed to turning healthy lands around the world into deserts, and vibrant ecosystems into death zones, including the elimination of forests, grasslands and the hardness of the ground that supports ecosystems and agricultural activity.” and local communities.”

The statements of the Secretary-General of the United Nations come hours before a speech he will address to the international community, on the occasion of World Environment Day, about climate action from inside the American Museum of Natural History, located in the middle of the Manhattan suburb of downtown New York City.

For her part, Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, warned, during her statements yesterday at the United Nations, of the continued desertification and land degradation that affect more than three billion people around the world. She stressed that freshwater ecosystems are also deteriorating, which makes it difficult to grow crops. Livestock farming is more difficult, and at the same time disproportionately affects small farmers and the poor in rural areas. She also stressed that by restoring ecosystems, “the international community can slow the triple crisis facing the planet of climate change, the nature crisis and the loss of diversity.” Biological, including desertification, pollution and waste crisis.

Andersen pointed out the possibility of reversing the loss of the Earth’s biodiversity by 2030, in line with the global biodiversity framework, pointing in this regard to the United Nations Decade for Ecosystem Restoration, which supports commitments to restore one billion hectares of land, an area larger than China, noting that six countries pledged last year to restore 300,000 kilometers of rivers and 350 million hectares of wetlands.

It should be noted that the United Nations Secretariat has affirmed on many environmental occasions and forums its conviction of the possibility of “peaceful coexistence with the Earth,” and has warned, especially in recent years, of the growing challenges and threats that still face ecosystems around the world, starting with forests and lands. Dry agricultural lands and lakes, especially natural areas, on which human existence depends, have reached the stage of collapse. According to reports of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, the year 2024 marks the thirtieth anniversary of its adoption, “40% of the planet Earth’s lands are currently passing through “In a stage of general deterioration, the results of which have been reflected in one way or another on the living conditions of half of the world’s population, its economy, and its state of growth and stability, including an increase in the average duration of drought by 29% since the year 2000.” These reports also warned of the repercussions of the international community ignoring these warnings. Due to its failure to take urgent measures to address the causes of this deterioration and stop its negative repercussions and developments, droughts are expected to expand and have a direct impact on more than three-quarters of the world’s population by 2050.