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John Muhammed Jamil Brownson Northern Rim Institute (Missoula, MT-USA) & Visiting Associate Professor of Geography Fatih University, College of Science and Literature Karaagac Yolu, Buyukcekmece, 34900 Istanbul, Turkey Tel: office +90 212 889 08 10 - private +90 532 682 18 19 ABSTRACT Places that face potential desertification share another common problem-a lack of information, resources, and connections to broader programs and agendas. Desertification has both biophysical and human dimensions, which include policy, planning, and socio-technical change. Scientific means exist to differentiate human from external factors of biosphere change in arid regions, separating drought from desertification, global climate from locally generated environmental change, and urban from rural environmental impacts. Technical measures exist to prevent, rehabilitate, or modify desertification where human settlement and economic activities are partly the cause. But few global programs effectively coordinate efforts with localities. Many such localities lack relevant information and resources to apply existing socio-technical procedures. They also suffer from inadequate distribution and access to expertise and information, technical and financial resources, public and administrative awareness and priorities, power to formulate and enact policy, and ability to organize and implement programs for increasing social learning and effective action. This paper identifies those problems as having rural and urban dimensions and the lack of an urban emphasis in agendas to combat desertification. It analyses relations between global agendas, programs, and local needs and infrastructure, concluding that systemic readjustments are needed to more effectively deliver assistance to localities. Proposed readjustments include suggestions for a global outreach policy and strategic plan to develop communication resources into an interactive network and information delivery system. Urban dimensions of desertification and urban roles in agenda and program development are emphasised as pivotal to providing focus and resources on the human aspects of local problems and solutions. INTRODUCTION The causes of desertification and mitigation of its effects-problem & solution-raise innumerable complex questions. This paper offers a context within which to analyse institutional processes, and in which to develop a framework for information strategies that might more effectively coordinate research into causes and efforts to mitigation effects of desertification. The information age requires new approaches to manage and convert information into accessible knowledge with multi-levels applications. My research points to a critical nexus at which too much information, organization, and action meets too little of the same. As data and discourse relating to desertification inundate the global information networks and research communities, linkages lag producers and consumers often bypassing end users. At present no systematic mapping of the desertification discourse, information, and action structure is available, thus we are unable to easily identify who is funded by whom to do what, where, and how. To map such a structure starts with a good relational database, which requires time, effort, and resources to design a system, ascertain what information and kinds of output are needed, then to collect and organize the data. Using computer graphics, it is then possible to map the information as diagrams, organizational and flow charts. Adding a GIS program it is also possible to locate the home base and territories of activity of each organization and lot their overlaps. While a number of desertification related databases presently serve the needs of particular institutions and specific topics, for example, Mediterranean Desertification and Land Use (MEDALUS) Spatial Database, among many others, there is no systematic linking of such databases, or an information map of the knowledge-action terrain. Therefore, identifying the key players and best venue for such a project answers questions about how to navigate the information highways and byways, and to store, manage, and retrieve practical data. The next step logically follows-to formally propose the project to potential supporting institutions. One necessary caveat: the purpose is not to replace any existing or future database or access link, rather it is to map what exists and provide the broadest access and user-friendly interface as a tool for researchers, organizations or individuals in search of information on all facets of desertification. The next steps are, however, more complex. First, an evaluation and monitoring mechanism must be part of the data collection and management process. Second, a "user-friendly" interface must be designed to effectively disseminate and deliver information to end users. Last, the system must also be able to train and educate potential users to make practical use of it. Aside from information sprawl and lack of coherence, mapping the desertification information environment must encourage broader accountability. This problem is not so much a matter of regulation, but of external monitoring, evaluation and feedback independent of any funding, or political process. Such a process would most effectively be linked to the database program. Likewise, a database needs constant maintenance to accurately reflect real time change, but professional expertise in information management remains scarce and often a low budget priority for many organizations. But such dynamic electronic libraries and their cyber-librarians are crucial to effective policy research and mitigation strategies. In society as in cyberspace, to transformation basic daily life skills into integrated problem solving thought requires a new social learning, drawing on the past and what is contemporary, to assess trends, and to be able to convert information into action. Such behavioural shifts must also take place within an increasingly complex and multi-layered system of political, economic, and socio-technical information, investment, policy, organization, and action, much of which poorly interfaces with ordinary people and the ongoing normative rhythms of everyday life. The challenge here is not to fracture daily life rhythms, nor to supersede the often competing and conflicting agendas among institutions that comprise a web of organizations and discourses. Rather, the situation requires making sense of agendas and to arrange them in some logical mapping that can assist in their communicative and pragmatic usefulness for mitigating real world problems of degradation in biodiversity, landscapes, and socio-economic conditions due to factors of desertification. Both desertification and management of complex information systems are worldwide problems, but most of the arid world remains unable to either study itself or fund such studies. Less socio-technically and economically developed countries have both less resources to use in combating desertification, and less capability to do so. Thus, to mitigate the causes and effects of desertification requires a worldwide effort to combine resources, raise awareness, and mobilise participation. MATERIALS AND METHODS Both a history and an institutional structure underlie the discourse of desertification, beginning with French scientist and explorer, Louis Lavauden, who coined the term in 1927. But desertification was not popularised until 1949 when André Aubréville used it to refer to largely human-induced land degradation in semi-arid and subhumid zones with annual precipitation between 700 and 1,500 millimetres (Aubréville, 1949). Since then, desertification has often been loosely used to describe conditions of drought, land degradation, and underdevelopment. Currently, its most widely accepted definition comes from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) - "'desertification' means land degradation in arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climate variations and human activities" (UNCCD Secretariat, 1999). By the 1970s, the term desertification was in common scientific use, and was widely used in relation to the disastrous 1968-1973 Sahelian drought, and in Stockholm during the UN Conference on the Human Environment. By 1973 the need for concerted efforts were recognized and a range of multilateral and bilateral donors, as well as UNESCO, FAO, WMO (World Meteorological Organization), contributed to the formation of the Comité Permanent Inter-états de Lutte Contre la Sécheresse dans le Sahel (CILSS). Then in 1974, the UN General Assembly voted to convene the 1977 landmark UN Conference on Desertification, which produced a Plan of Action to Combat Desertification (PACD) to be carried out through UNEP's anti-desertification programme. Prior to PACD, desertification research remained the domain of natural scientists studying climate and environmental change, most notably through the International Biological Programme (IBP) of the United Nations. This worldwide converge of science into biome based research groups was a pivotal event in the organizational progress of human scientific endeavour. By bringing together scientists and researchers from multi-sectoral and multinational affiliations to focus on understanding basic mechanisms of the primary biomes, the IBP laid the groundwork for the enhanced level of scientific understanding, theory, methodology, and cooperation that exists today. Its worldwide interdisciplinary research into basic biome ecosystems established a platform of information and understanding of ecological processes and their variety within a spatial distribution of large-scale ecosystems, or biomes. Following this success UNESCO established the Man and Biosphere (MAB) program that identified and sought protection for critical genetic core areas of ecosystems under the label of Biosphere Reserves. Today we see a third phase of the process, the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and in particular its focus on Global Change. But however effective this process is at identifying baseline ecological data and understanding of ecosystems, biomes, and environmental problems, that process was not mandated to offer a framework or process to solve problems. It took an alliance among other scientific researchers, in particular the social sciences, and economic development oriented agencies to build the bridge necessary to take integrated and unified action in researching and addressing processes of desertification. Thus international awareness of the human aspects of desertification caused a different framework to evolve from the natural science based IBP-MAB-IGBP series. Taking the linked issues of desertification, environment, and economic development into the political arena prompted the series of UN discussions and actions that resulted in the Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). While the CCD is a framework agreement among UN member states, it required compliance at that level, thus mandating country-signatories to form National Action Programmes (NAPs). Within each NAP national governments are further mandated to integrate NGO's and other representatives of civil society, scientific and research communities, and local authorities into the framework and process. Thus, problems that arise from human impact on the environment, and reciprocally, from impact of environmental change on human life, have found convergence within an institutional framework. To facilitate the CCD, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is supporting policy and strategy in dryland development and desertification control through its Office to Combat Desertification and Drought (UNSO). In particular, UNSO has established a programme and plan of action to strengthen the role of women in the implementation of the CCD at the local, national, subregional, regional and global level, a crucial factor in support of the CCD's strong commitment to women's equal participation. And of all the potential elements of local participation that can enormously impact the struggle to combat desertification, women are the most important. Not only in their role as primary labourers and household managers, but as child bearers and primary caretakers, the liberation, education, and participation of women can change the entire framework of human-environmental relationships in societies affected by or at risk of desertification. Analysing the international structure of organizations involved in desertification issues, United Nations Organizations are first among equals, followed by other inter governmental organizations. Next, are international NGOs that directly respond to desertification or place it high on their agendas, such as OECD, OCSE. Within this secondary rank and yet unique, we must situate the European Union (EU) and its various organisations, which are the most important set of actors between the UNOs, INOs, national governments, and intra-national organisations. Although history records many governmental alliances, the European Union structure is unparalleled as an experimental political framework, especially in the inclusion of international local and regional representation in the European Parliament. At another level, some regional inter-governmental organizations focus on aspects of desertification, including the Arab League, Organization of African States, and Organization of Islamic Countries. In addition, elements of the former Soviet Union, recast into the Confederation of Independent States (CIS), overtly and covertly involves desertification prone newly independent Central Asian states, and quasi-autonomous regions. But despite global shifts towards greater influence by private sector and International Organizations (INOs), nation states continue to be the most important players, Then within each country a variable number of governmental and non-governmental players range from Ministerial to local community levels. One of the major problems for lesser-developed states, however, is the lack of a strong and well-organized civil society or civil service. For a variety of reasons, highly centralised state systems, irrespective of how efficient or inefficient, discourage development of formal social institutions that may modify their power over citizens and interest groups, including local government. Nevertheless, holistic development involves a fully participant and interactive civil society working in tandem with governance and public authority at all levels. Without such integrative processes that include citizen participation and representation outside of a strictly governmental apparatus, it seems unlikely that such countries can experience the social change necessary for economic shifts to more sustainable uses of the environment. Thus the most important aspect of this process involves co-operation in information sharing and management, and experimentation in implementation. While the UNCCD rightly takes the lead framework for integrating many processes through national action programmes, not every government can or desires to put together the mix of power sharing participation called for in the UNCCD guidelines. Therefore, private sector and NGO and research sectors must work together to both share information and to influence government on these issues, and policy research and studies must establish networks involving local authorities, who often have little practical authority in heavily centralised state systems. DISCUSSION Globally, most discourse represents desertification as more acute in lesser-developed rural areas. Thus, most global priorities are addressed towards rural problems of human needs resulting from overpopulation and the corresponding need for more intensive extraction of marginal natural resources - soil, water, vegetation, etc.- to support pastoral and agricultural economies. But current data shows that urbanisation is most dynamic in arid regions, including a rapidly growing population and age structure much younger than the global average. A lack of information and broader connections to existing desertification policy and action programs, and theoretical solutions are also readily identifiable. One problem is what to do at the international level to penetrate national barriers to action and to connect with those public agencies that are responsible and assist with organisational and informational resources. Secondly, how can such responsible organizations penetrate further into individual societies to connect with national NGO's and assist them in similar ways. Finally, deeper social penetration is necessary to connect with local authorities and public institutions, especially communities that lack traditions and mechanisms to develop formal public organizations. While it is necessary to recognize the UNCCD as the global focus for the study of all facets of desertification, and application of remedies, we must also acknowledge their limits. First, the UNCCD operates through the National Action Programs (NAP) of nation states, acting as a facilitator for both individual NAP's and dialogue among them, as well as an umbrella for restructuring and coordinating donor programmes. As we have seen, each nation state varies in its capability of action, and in its priorities, often-placing political territorial issues or political economic issues above concerted efforts at combating desertification whether internally or through co-operative action with its neighbours or within other international arenas. Moreover, the UNCCD agenda aims to bring more transparency and integration among government, local authorities, civil society, private sector economy, and NGO's within each country and its NAP framework. This ideal, however important, may be highly unrealistic in countries where a weak civil society faces a strong centralising governmental authority. Throughout this paper I have purposely avoided naming specific countries, intending to draw a rather general picture and offer a generic model, so, I will conclude with some recommendations for that model. The UNCCD's agenda specifies that each NAP should plan to address issues at national, regional, and sub-regional levels. But in the face of poor distribution of governance and democratic institutions among many of the countries of Africa and Asia, the question arises of how to involve local authorities when they are appointed by central governments rather than elected at their respective levels of spatial organization. The developed world has come to expect a degree of local voice in decision making through election of local officials, irrespective of their ties or lack of ties to whatever governmental apparatus rules the country. Where local authorities are appointed by the central state apparatus, rather than elected locally, their integration with local communities and the ability of those local communities to express themselves is limited. Thus, while various funding and diplomatic mechanisms can be used to induce national governments towards more open and democratic processes, other more direct means are necessary to connect local communities and authorities to the outside world. In addition to NGO's that represent various specific environmental and development issues, some represent professional organizations, and perhaps of greatest interest here, local governmental authorities. In this case, irrespective of whether local authorities are appointed or elected, they should be invited to participate in the international arena of organizations which represent them. Such NGO's as the International Union of Local Authorities (IULA) and International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), the African Sustainable Cities Network (ASCN), all of which are affiliated with Agenda 21 Best Practices. In addition, a number of regional and international professional organizations represent urban and regional planning professionals, such as the International Society of City and Regional Planners (ISoCaRP), International Federation of Housing and Planning (IFHP), the Arab Societies of Civil Engineers, City Planning Division, and so on. Here we come to the crux of the problem-how to inform and involve localities (by localities, I mean an ensemble of authorities, civil society, public and private sectors). How best can we communicate options for participation in such international organizations as exist to assist and represent members, and how best can localities be motivated to participate. We thus face a problem of international outreach on one hand and local mobilisation on the other hand. Despite opportunities and benefits that may be gained through international connections and organizational liaison, some localities may not be so motivated to do so. Thus, a double burden exists on the international community to reach out and educate localities about benefits, and to motivate and facilitate participation. Moreover, there is a need within all such international organizations to create specific interest sections relevant to problems of desertification. That is, the international community involved in desertification issues needs to reach out and promote awareness of desertification among all such international organizations as are relevant to participation by localities afflicted by desertification. Here strong overlaps exist between combating desertification and sustainable development. In this case, Agenda 21 Best Practices forms the core for such linkages, as a broad ensemble of international, regional, and national organizations are involved in the Best Practices process. As well, where localities are unaware or not involved in Agenda 21 Best Practices processes and linkages to international efforts, convergence and cooperation between organizations promoting Best Practices and those combating desertification may more effectively inform and involve localities in both processes. Here, overlap between this process and RIOD. Moreover, another link emerges with the voice of local government, which became part of the formal record of a UN General Assembly meeting for the first time during the 1997 UN General Assembly Special Session (Earth Summit +5) to review progress since the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development. The UN General Assembly Special Session met on behalf of the world community of local government and in particular, on behalf of the World Assembly of Cities and Local Authorities Coordination (WACLAC). In conclusion, wide ranges of institutional structures interlace with the twin objectives of combating desertification and sustainable development of affected and potentially affected ecosystems. Although the UNCCD takes a lead role in coordinating strategy, it must share the stage with a varied ensemble of other players, from other UN and multi-national organisations and international NGOs, to regional, national, local, and alternative organisations. To better understand the global efforts, investments, and interventions in localities within the parameters of desertification criteria, some structure is needed to map both problems and resources, and link databases. In addition, this structure needs innovative information management, monitoring, evaluation, and outreach capability. In tandem with this structured process, international partnership and matchmaking among participants, especially localities, can help provide needed transparency lacking in countries with centralised, command and control political systems. Lastly, investment in local data gathering can facilitate technology transfer, education, and economic alternatives to localities presently suffering from a lack of options. And finally, only such international partnerships in local planning and projects can assist women to become stakeholders with equity, dignity, and full participation in the sustainable development process. REFERENCES Aubreville, A. 1949 Climat, forets et desertification de l'Afrique tropicale. Societe-d'Editions Geographiques, Maritimes et Coloniales. Paris, 351 pp. Secretariat, "United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification: In those countries experiencing serious drought and/or desertification particularly in Africa, text with annexes. 1999, Bonn, Germany United Nations Desertification Control Programme Activity Centre, 1987, Rolling back the desert, United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi, 17pp. World Bank, 1984, Towards sustained development in sub-Saharan Africa: a joint programme of action, Washington, DC. |