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COP15 began in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, with the presence of several heads of state. The parties present will try to reach an agreement on concrete measures to combat the increasing desertification in the world. The conference comes as the UN warns there is a 50% chance the +1.5°C threshold will be breached in the next five years.
The 15th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) opened on Monday, May 9, in the Ivorian capital.
Its purpose is to address crucial issues related to the fight against climatic variations resulting from human activities, which contribute to desertification and land degradation throughout the world.
“Land. Life. Heritage: From a precarious world to a prosperous future” is the motto of the conference.
COP 15 is intended to be “a call to action to ensure that the land, which is our source of life on this planet, continues to benefit present and future generations,” the UNCCD said in a statement.
Desertification, a major environmental problem
Contrary to what one might think, desertification is not the transformation of the land into a desert, but the result of soil degradation, overexploitation and inappropriate use of the land.
There are two factors that cause this phenomenon: the salinization of the land and deforestation.
Salinization is the process of accumulation of salts in soils to toxic levels for most plants, animals and fungi. It has become one of the main causes of desertification, erosion and degradation of soil and agriculture.
Its causes are diverse, but as many scientists point out, climatic disturbances, such as the rise in sea level, the reduction in rainfall and the increase in temperatures, are factors that explain it.
Currently, the regions most affected by desertification are the Sahel in West Africa, China and Australia.
In the Sahel, where the food production system is mainly based on agriculture, desertification has dramatic consequences for the 44 million inhabitants of the region: reduced agricultural yields, decreased drinking water resources, loss of livestock and famine.
Climate impacts will get deeper
The opening of COP15 also occurs at a time when the United Nations Organization announced on Tuesday, May 10, that there is a 50% chance that the average annual temperature of the planet will temporarily be 1.5ºC above pre-industrial values for at least one of the next five years.
This would aggravate the problem of desertification. However, a temporary exceedance of the threshold in one year does not mean a sustained rise.
For the years between 2017 and 2021, the probability of exceeding was 10%. Since then it has increased “up to almost 50% for the period 2022-2026,” warns the UN. But there is only a small chance (10%) that the five-year average will exceed the +1.5°C threshold.
“This study shows, with high scientific confidence, that we are getting significantly closer to temporarily reaching the lower limit of the Paris Agreement. The figure of 1.5°C is not a randomly chosen statistic. It indicates the point at which the effects will be increasingly damaging to people and the planet as a whole,” said World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.
with AFP
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