Why in news ?
Cultivated lands in India are in the grips of desertification. The country’s Green Revolution pockets are especially prone to the problem. The biggest threat of desertification emanates from the major crops of the Green Revolution — wheat and paddy. If agricultural land in Punjab is to be protected from desertification, the best way is to shift wheat and paddy cultivation to 5 million hectares of land in the Indo Gangetic plains of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. India faces a growing crisis of land degradation: Nearly 30% of its land area, as much as the area of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra put together, has been degraded through deforestation, over-cultivation, soil erosion and depletion of wetlands. A major global agreement on issues related to land, the convention (UNCCD) seeks to address the phenomenon of desertification, the process through which fertile and productive land become degraded and unfit for useful activities like agriculture.

When did UNCCD convention came into force?

• The Convention was adopted in Paris on 17 June 1994 and entered into force on 26 December 1996, 90 days after the 50th ratification was received.  The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in Those Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, Particularly in Africa (UNCCD) is a Convention to combat desertification and mitigate the effects of drought through national action programs that incorporate long-term strategies supported by international cooperation and partnership arrangements.
• The UNCCD is one of three Conventions that have come out of the historic 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. It is, however, possibly the least known of the three. The Rio summit gave rise to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) under which countries have agreed to restrict the emissions of greenhouse gases, first through the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and now through the Paris Agreement that was finalised in 2015 and becomes operational next year. It also gave rise to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) which too has delivered an international arrangement to protect and use biodiversity. The UNCCD has not yet resulted in any international treaty or protocol to fight desertification.
• The UNFCCC holds its general meetings every year, while CBD and CCD meet every two years.
• The Convention, the only convention stemming from a direct recommendation of the Rio Conference's Agenda 21, was adopted in Paris, France, on 17 June 1994 and entered into force in December 1996. It is the only internationally legally binding framework set up to address the problem of desertification. The Convention is based on the principles of participation, partnership and decentralization—the backbone of Good Governance and Sustainable Development. It has 197 parties, making it near universal in reach.
• To help publicise the Convention, 2006 was declared "International Year of Deserts and Desertification".
• At the time the UNCCD was born in Rio, degradation of land was mostly viewed as a localised problem, one that was mainly affecting countries in Africa. In fact, it was on the demand of the African countries that CCD came into being. The Convention repeatedly makes a mention of the special needs of Africa in fighting desertification.
• Over the years, it has become increasingly clear that land degradation was impacting the global network of food and commodity supply chains and was getting impacted in return. The crops being grown and the quantities in which they were being grown were dictated not by local needs but by global demands. Changes in food habits and international trade have altered cropping patterns in many areas. Large-scale migration to urban centres and industrial hubs has seen a heavy concentration of populations in small areas, putting unsustainable pressure on land and water resources.

Where did Desertification Occurs?
Desertification takes place worldwide in drylands, and its effects are experienced locally, nationally, regionally, and globally. Drylands occupy 41% of Earth’s land area and are home to more than 2 billion people—a third of the human population in the year 2000. Drylands include all terrestrial regions where water scarcity limits the production of crops, forage, wood, and other ecosystem provisioning services.  Desertification is a result of a long-term failure to balance demand for and supply of ecosystem services in drylands. The pressure is increasing on dryland ecosystems for providing services such as food, forage, fuel, building materials, and water for humans and livestock, for irrigation, and for sanitation. This increase is attributed to a combination of human factors and climatic factors. The former includes indirect factors like population pressure, socioeconomic and policy factors, and globalization phenomena like distortions to international food markets and direct factors like land use patterns and practices and climate-related processes. The climatic factors of concern include droughts and projected reduction in freshwater availability due to global warming. While the global and regional interplay of these factors is complex, it is possible to understand it at the local scale.
A variety of factors, both natural and human-induced, are known to be affecting the productivity of land, and making them desert-like. Increasing populations and the resultant rise in demand for food and water, feed for cattle, and a wide variety of ecosystem services these offer, have prompted human beings to clear forests, use chemicals, cultivate multiple crops, and over-exploit groundwater. This has affected both the health and productivity of land. Natural processes such as rising global temperatures increase the frequency and intensity of droughts, and changing weather patterns have put further pressure on the land.

Who is responsible for Desertification ?

• Overgrazing is the major cause of desertification worldwide. Other factors that cause desertification include urbanization, climate change, overuse of groundwater, deforestation, natural disasters, and tillage practices in agriculture that make soils more vulnerable to wind.
• Desertification refers to the persistent degradation of dryland ecosystems by climatic variations and human activities. It occurs on all continents (except Antarctica) and affects the livelihoods of millions of people, including a large proportion of the poor in drylands.
• The U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) defines it as “land degradation in arid, semiarid and dry subhumid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities.” Land degradation is in turn defined as the reduction or loss of the biological or economic productivity of drylands.
• Desertification has implications for food and water security, livelihoods, migration, conflicts and even international security. Combating desertification refers to activities that prevent or reduce land degradation, and restore partially or fully degraded land.
• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) too came out with a special report on land a recently, in which it said that the rate of soil erosion in many areas of the world was up to 100 times faster than the rate of soil formation. It also said the annual area of drylands in drought had been increasing at more than 1 per cent every year in the last 50 years, and that nearly 500 million people lived in areas that have experienced desertification after the 1980s

How can countries slow down this loss of land and biodiversity that threatens global food security ?

• As land degrades it also exacerbates climate change as the ability of land to absorb carbon dioxide reduces with increased degradation.
• Afforestation can contribute by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere which is stored in tree trunks, roots, branches and leaves. The pace of afforestation, however, will have to increase substantially and current trends are worrying as evidenced by the recent forest fires in the Amazon rainforest. The fires which have increased 85% compared to last year are caused, in part, by increased deforestation.
• At the UNCCD Conference, India announced its intention to restore 50 lakh hectare of degraded land by 2030. Out of this is 28.5 percentage points lower than the total land that has been degraded in the country. In other words, India has committed to restoring only 5% of its degraded land as an estimated 960 lakh hectare of land stands degraded.
• There are two types of solutions: Those with immediate impact such as conservation of wetlands, rangelands and mangroves which absorb huge stocks of GHGs like CO2 from the atmosphere. There are other solutions that are more long-term: Planting of trees, reforestation and afforestation.
• Avoiding, reducing and reversing desertification would enhance soil fertility and increase carbon storage in soils and biomass while benefiting agricultural productivity and food security. Prevention of desertification is, however, preferable to attempts to restore degraded land.
• Over 30% of food is wasted or lost globally, which contributes to 10% of total GHG emissions from human activities. A number of response options such as increased food productivity, dietary choices and food losses and waste reduction can reduce the demand for land conversion. This could free land and create opportunities for enhanced implementation of other strategies listed here.
• Creation of windbreaks through afforestation, tree planting and ecosystem restoration programmes that can function as “green walls” and “green dams” that reduce dust and sandstorms and sand dune movement.
• This land loss is not only whittling away India’s gross domestic product by 2.5% every year and affecting its crop yield, but also exacerbating climate change events in the country which, in turn, are causing even greater degradation.