A line in the sand: Workers plant a web of shrubs in the desert to halt the advancing of sand dunes

Xinjiang, in Northwest China, is home to the country's biggest deserts. Fighting desertification is a constant for cities deep in the region, to avoid the fate of being buried like the ancient Loulan civilization more than 1,600 years ago.

The town of Qiemo, in the middle of the Taklimakan Desert, China's largest, has been fighting against the sand dunes pushing towards it. On the other side of the Qarqan River, the sand dunes are only two kilometers away at the nearest point. Three times in the town's history, the river running through it was diverted by shifting desert sands................the article and more images to...(Global Times)
23/10/14

In fight against hunger, UN launches initiative targeting threat of desertification

 UN, 22 October 2014 – The growing menace of desertification poses a distinct threat to the world’s agriculture and eco-systems, the United Nations agriculture agency warned today, as it announced a new initiative aimed at curbing the spread of land degradation and building resilience to climate change.

The programme, named Action Against Desertification and launched by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in partnership with the European Union and the African, Caribbean, and Pacific Group of States (ACP), will devote some €41million to bolstering sustainable land management across the world’s most vulnerable areas in an effort to fight hunger and poverty.

“Desertification and land degradation are very serious challenges. They lead to hunger and poverty, themselves at the root of many conflicts,” FAO Director-General, José Graziano da Silva, said in a press release marking the programme’s launch.

“But recent successes show that these problems are not insurmountable. We can boost food security, improve livelihoods and help people adapt to climate change.”

The FAO reports that more than 70 per cent of people living in drylands and other fragile ecosystems across Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific derive their livelihoods from natural resources. At the same time, an uptick in population growth and climate change has placed increasing pressure on these ecosystems, intensifying degradation and desertification and putting millions of lives at risk.

In an effort to thwart the costly effects of desertification in Africa, the Action Against Desertification will build on an already existing “flagship programme” – the Great Green Wall for the Sahara and the Sahel Initiative – which supports local communities, Government and civil society in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Gambia, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal with the sustainable management and restoration of their dryland forests and rangelands.

Two-thirds of the African continent is classified as desert or drylands and climate change has led to prolonged periods of drought; over-intensive farming and over-grazing have caused land degradation; and deforestation has turned once fertile land into desert in many areas.

On that note, the FAO-backed programme it will support agro-forestry while also incentivizing the creation of farmer field schools where farmers can learn about the causes of desertification and the best ways to combat and prevent it.

Meanwhile, in both the Caribbean and the Pacific, the new initiative will target the problems of soil loss and degraded natural habitats by helping local communities adopt improved sustainable land and forest management practices. 
un.org
22/10/14
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Related:

• UN opens high-level meeting on combating desertification.

• Four African nations agree to improve use of key water resource under UN-backed plan. -Chad, Egypt, Libya and Sudan to ensure the equitable use of the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System.

• NASA Satellite Images Reveal Shocking Groundwater Loss in Drought-Stricken California

• California Experiencing Most Severe Drought Ever Recorded

NASA Photographs Show Eastern Basin of Aral Sea Totally Dried

New NASA photographs taken by satellite show Central Asia' once-vibrant Aral Sea shrinking to levels possibly not seen in centuries.
The images taken in August by the Terra satellite show that the sea's eastern basin, on the border of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, completely empty, the first time in modern times, said Philip Micklin, a well-known geographer and professor emeritus of Western Michigan University and an Aral Sea expert.

"And it is likely the first time it has completely dried in 600 years, since medieval desiccation associated with diversion of the Amu Darya [river] to the Caspian Sea," he told NASA.
By some accounts, the destruction of the sea is considered one of the world's worst environmental catastrophes.

• Once the fourth largest sea in the world, the Aral has been shrinking since the 1960s when the Soviet Union undertook a major irrigation project to supply the arid plains of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. 

The region's two main rivers — the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya — were tapped to irrigate water-intensive crops like cotton and others in the arid Central Asian desert.

The desert bloomed in many places, but at the expense of the lake, which has shriveled, destroying ecosystems, decimating a vibrant fishing industry and leaving dozens of communities suffering from poverty and environmentally-induced disease.
Micklin said lower rain and snow fall in the mountains to the east this year  considerably reduced the flow into the Amu Darya feeding the lake.
Uzbekistan continues to use the river for its economically-important cotton industry.
As the water receded, the sea has split into two separate sections: the North, or Small, Aral Sea, located within Kazakhstan; and the South, or Large, Aral Sea. The latter split into western and eastern basins.

• “As the lake dried up, fisheries and the communities that depended on them collapsed,” NASA noted in its statement that accompanied the publication of photographs. “The increasingly salty water became polluted with fertilizer and pesticides. Blowing dust from the exposed lakebed, contaminated with agricultural chemicals, became a public health hazard.”

The continual loss of water has also contributed to a change in the regional climate, making winters colder and summers hotter and drier, the statement said.

The photos of the drying lake were taken in August of this year by NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite.
In an effort to save the lake, in 2005 a World Bank-funded dam was built in Kazakhstan, which has helped to partially restore the northern section, albeit at a fraction of its former size and volume.
http://www.voanews.com/content/nasa-photographs-show-eastern-basin-of-aral-sea-totally-dried/2471680.html
3/10/14
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UN opens high-level meeting on combating desertification.

WINDHOEK, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Government ministers and other heads of delegation from 195 parties to a UN special convention on fighting expanding deserts across the globe started on Monday a two-day meeting here.

The high-level gathering begins as the 11th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP11) to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which opened in the Namibian capital on Sept. 16, went into its second week. The participants will discuss in the form of three round tables on topics including achieving a land degradation neutral world, promoting good practices in implementing the convention, and scaling up investments in avoiding land degradation and restoring degraded land.


In a message sent to the meeting, UN General Secretary Ban Ki- moon pointed out that healthy land is a prerequisite for food and water security and necessary to avert political instability.

"We need a paradigm shift to land stewardship. We need to work with countries and local communities to protect and sustain the world's fragile drylands and restore degraded land. This conference, under the theme 'A Stronger UNCCD for a Land- Degradation Neutral World', can make a valuable contribution in defining the way forward", said Ban.

Luc Gnacadja, outgoing Executive Secretary of UNCCD, said government officials and other key stakeholders participating in this high-level segment are supposed to share their guidance on how to build a stronger UNCCD, on how to overcome the hurdles of scaling up and disseminating good practice as well as their reaction to the promising evidence emerging from the work on the economics of land degradation.

They are also expected to bring political momentum to the deliberations of parties on the best options to foster the implementation of the convention, which was adopted in 1994 to counter the destructive force of desertification and mitigate the effects of drought through international cooperation.

A summary of the outcomes of the round-table discussions will be submitted to the COP11 meeting for further consideration.
At last year's "Rio+20" summit on sustainable development, world leaders pledged to strive to achieve a land degradation neutral world.
Such a world will be realized by way of preventing the degradation of healthy lands through sustainable land management and restoring land that is already degraded, according to the UN's plan.
To this end, the UNCCD secretariat is proposing that UN member states agree to a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) on realizing zero land degradation by 2030.
"Land degradation and drought are drying up the future we want. I am fully convinced that our generation can go land-degradation neutral and can stop creating man-made barren lands or deserts", said Gnacadja. 
 http://english.cntv.cn/20130923/104689.shtml
23/9/13
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Related:

• Four African nations agree to improve use of key water resource under UN-backed plan. -Chad, Egypt, Libya and Sudan to ensure the equitable use of the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System.