U.N. conference focuses on desert encroachment

RECIFE, Brazil -- Each year, a chunk of farmland nearly twice the size of Maryland turns into desert, making poor countries even less able to feed themselves. But experts say the problem of desertification is reversible if rich nations care -- and pay.

"It is a problem with a solution within our reach," Hama Arba Diallo, executive secretary of the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification, said yesterday. "We just need more gasoline in our engine."

How much funding is needed -- and how to get it -- was the question at a UNCCD conference that began yesterday in this coastal city on the edge of Brazil's drought zone, 1,160 miles northeast of Rio de Janeiro.

Delegates from 159 countries that have signed the convention are at the meeting, which began Nov. 15 and ends Friday. The United States has not ratified the convention, but officials said the Clinton administration is "formally committed" to obtaining its approval by Congress early next year.

Still, saving the land engulfed by deserts will require "massive investment," warned Brazil's Environment Minister, Jose Sarney Filho.

Delegates said effective measures will demand tens of billions of dollars, mostly for irrigation and soil fertilization.

The UNCCD is a product of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. But aside from isolated measures by individual countries, particularly in Africa and Latin America, little has been done to prevent deserts from expanding.

Dozens of environmental groups and a Brazilian farm-workers group staged a peaceful demonstration yesterday outside the Convention Center where the meeting is taking place. They called for the Organization of Economic Development and Cooperation to make "sufficient funds" available for affected countries to implement anti-desertification programs.

That funding would be available if creditors canceled the foreign debt of the poorest countries and if the debt of other developing countries is invested in relieving poverty and fostering sustainable development, protesters said.

"This is already happening," said Michelle Leighton, of the San Francisco-based Natural Heritage Institute. "But we want developed nations and lending institutions to become more aware of the problem."

In Brazil, desertification affects more than 17 million people and covers close to 400,000 square miles. Worldwide, more than 23,000 square miles per year becomes desert, according to the conference's official statistics. Worldwide, losses are estimated at $42 billion.

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