POLICY REVIEW desertification
Southern Africa focuses on desertification activities
Namib Desert
An aerial view of sand dunes in the Namib desert in Namibia 		Sub-regional and regional action programmes
Parties to the convention have committed themselves to provide for effective participation of all interested parties including farmers and pastoralists. The African countries agree in their annex that NAPS shall be a central and integral part of the broader process of policy formulation for sustainable development. They also agree that sub-regional and regional action plans should harmonise, complement and increase the efficiency of NAPs.

Financial resources and mechanisms
Rather than setting up a single system of funding, the convention concentrates on mobilising resources through existing channels, strengthening them and re-orientating them to fit its integrated, bottom-up approach.

Alliances have been formed within SADC, and a sub-regional action programme is being developed, as well as conducting various other actions such as workshops on:

  • Early Warning Systems and the CCD
  • the integration of the Kalahari-Namib Action Plan into the NAP;
  • the integration of gender concerns in the NAP process
  • the establishment of the Multi-disciplinary Scientific; and Technical Consultative Committee (MSTCC) on the CCD. This also involves considering a programme of action and future ad hoc panels of the CCD and a programme of action and future activities for the MSTCC to combat land degradation, desertification and drought in SADC, withemphasis on research and development and transfer of technology.
This review is largely based on the presentations and recommendations of a meeting held by the GLOBE Southern African Network in South Africa, September 1998. The meeting was attended by several government and non-government representatives from SADC countries.
Desertification is a problem in southern Africa where huge chunks of land have been rendered useless especially in Namibia and Botswana. The Namib and the Kalahari deserts are the biggest deserts in the region.

In the international arena, governments endorsed the Convention to Combat Desertification in those Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, Particularly in Africa in an effort to provide guidelines on how governments can work together to contain massive land degradation. According to the SADC Environment and Land Management Sector (SADC-ELMS), all member countries have ratified the CCD.

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, particularly in Africa was officially adopted on June 17 1994.

In 1997, the United Nations called a conference on desertification in Nairobi, Kenya, and adopted a Plan of Action to Combat Desertification. The plan failed because the international community lacked the coordination, financial and political commitment. The plan of action was written without consultation with the actual people worst affected by land degradation.

Considering that the people severely affected by land degradation are among the poorest in the world, the convention has the potential to:
  • reduce the vulnerability of affected populations by securing their land tenure rights;
  • strengthen the role of women in the implementation;
  • improve productivity of the land; and
  • create new opportunities for alternative livelihoods, not necessarily linked to the land.
Successful implementation of the convention should improve living conditions, and reduce poverty while also helping to alleviate related problems such as urban migration, loss of plant and animal species, climate change and the need for emergency aid to populations in crisis.

The convention states that the policy must have a "bottom-up" approach and that the local people must be fully involved in deciding how to tackle the problems of land degradation and overcome poverty.

Through SADC-ELMS, member states are working together in certain areas to find how best to develop partnerships and joint programmes that will ensure equity-led growth in the SADC sub-region. Relevant sub-regional institutions should be strengthened and these programmes must compliment each country's National Action Programme (NAP).