Burkina Faso Environmentalists Declare War on Desertification
7/29/99
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Title: Burkina Faso Environmentalists Declare War on
Desertification
Source: InterPress Service
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: July 29, 1999
Byline: Abdoulaye Gandema
OUAGADOUGOU, Jul 29 (IPS) - More than 400 environmentalists in
Burkina Faso have declared war on desertification, which is
devastating the vast West African country.
The environmentalists, who met recently in the Burkinabe capital of
Ouagadougou, put their seal of approval on a National Action Plan
Against Desertification (PAN/LCD) scheduled to start before year's
end.
The PAN/LCD is an offshoot of the International Convention Against
Desertification and the Effects of Drought (CCD), conceived at the UN
Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992.
The Convention, signed by 115 countries including Burkina Faso, calls
for ''Economic growth, social development, and the eradication of
poverty''.
Within the CCD framework, each member country has been mandated to
prepare and implement its own plan of action. Burkina Faso is the
first African country to have almost completed its development plan.
The plan, which began in October, 1994, will be finalised and adopted
by the Council of Ministers at the end of August, 1999. The
implementation will begin as early as June, 2000.
A parallel project, the National Fund Against Desertification (FND),
has also been created to help marshall financial resources to
implement the plan.
''The Fund will not replace the traditional financing schemes, such
as bilateral and multilateral contributions, for example'', says
Issiaka Kabore, a sociologist in Ouagadougou.
''The FND will work with structures such as the World Mechanism, an
international organisation, which helps find funds to fight
desertification'', he adds.
Technical and scientific cooperation will also be beefed up to fight
desertification, a global phenomenon affecting almost 66 percent of
the world's countries.
''The general strategies of the PAN/LCD consist of targeting areas
affected by desertification with integrated local development
programmes in an attempt to eradicate poverty while fighting against
desert encroachment'', says Kabore.
In Burkina Faso, several anti-drought programmes were put to test in
1974 but all failed, largely because local people had not been
involved. The same was true for ''The Three Battles'', which was
launched in 1985 and directed against three of the environment's
major enemies: deforestation, bush fires, and uncontrolled grazing.
Adama Ouedraogo of the department of Environment, Water and Forests,
says, ''there are lessons the PAN/LCD can learn from our past
experiences, which also had a positive side''.
Burkina Faso is among the countries in Africa which practices
excessive deforestation. The country uses 3.5 million metric tonnes
of wood, a figure representing 26,000 hectares, per year.
In Burkina Faso, with a population of 10 million people, agriculture
constitutes the principal source of income for 90 percent of the
population. Outdated agricultural methods, such as the burning of
bush and the clearing of fields have created vast barren spots
unsuitable for agricultural activity.
''In some places in the north, eking out a subsistence living from
the soil will be a challenge,'' says Ouedraogo. ''It's no accident
that almost half of all Burkinabes live below the poverty
line...That's the reason that you can't unlink the fight against
desertification from the fight against poverty.''
The PAN/LCD is expected to forge strong links among the various
associations of subsistence farmers in the fight against
desertification.
Kabore says the previous plans to fight desert encroachment failed
because the experts remained in their ivory towers and developed
their programmes isolated from the people who would be effected by
them, and not in tandem with them.
''With the PAN/LCD, we look for a new approach to transcend the old
one, namely, to begin at zero and involve the prime beneficiaries
from the very outset'', says Kabore, who is also a member of the
technical committee of the PAN/LCD.