The treaty on desertification.

In June 1992, African delegates to the Earth Summit arrived in Rio, Brazil, determined to alert the world to the seriousness of desertification. Many felt that "their" issues were being ignored and only the issues of the industrialized world were receiving attention. They saw the summit as an opportunity to demand that desertification receive the same level of attention given to other major ecological problems, such as climate change and the loss of biodiversity. They accomplished their goal. During the two-week conference, prominent figures from all over the world agreed that the time had come to take action. Soon after, the United Nations General Assembly created an international negotiating committee to draft an "International Convention to Combat Desertification."

Affecting about 900 million people in over 100 countries, desertification is the degradation of arid land, whether from human or natural factors. Its causes include overgrazing, overcropping, poor irrigation practices, deforestation, and drought. Recent estimates put the amount of land affected at approximately 1.2 billion hectares worldwide -- about the size of China and India combined. That's about 17 percent of the planet's total land area, and the process appears to be accelerating.

Most of the people affected by desertification live in the countries of the South, the majority residing in Africa. These nations are largely agrarian, and many are already plagued with food shortages. As the quality of the land deteriorates, the threat of famine rises, causing an already dire situation to go from bad to worse. Desertification is also a significant factor in the loss of biodiversity.

The negotiating committee met on five occasions to work out the contents of the Convention. At the final session, held in Paris last June, an agreement was reached after several intense, all-night debates. The most contentious issue was financing. Southern countries had hoped to win additional commitments from donor countries, but they had to settle for a reassignment of existing funds. It is possible, however, that the Global Environmental Facility, a collaboration of the U.N. Environment Programme, the U.N. Development Programme, and the World Bank, will help fund projects related to the GEF's focal areas: biodiversity, international waterways, the ozone layer, and climate change.

The Convention encourages governments to set up their own programs and to invite non-governmental organizations to participate. National programs would do a detailed mapping of the regions affected, which would allow the causes of desertification to be defined for each locale. Remedies could then be tailored to the site: farmed slopes could be terraced, for instance, or native trees could be planted to act as windbreaks. The convention also encourages the use of traditional agricultural practices in the struggle against desertification. Multicropping, for instance, is less likely to exhaust soil nutrients than are monocultures. Other goals include expanding educational and research programs. In October 1994, the convention was officially opened for signatures. It will enter into force upon ratification by 50 countries, a process that is expected to take two years.